AI Hallucination Stemming from Contract Lawyer’s Research
I blogged earlier this week about AI hallucinations in court filings by prominent law firms, as well as an incorrect citation in an expert’s declaration stemming a lawyer’s use of AI to try to format the citation. But I thought I’d blog a bit more about AI hallucinations in court filings, just to show how pervasive the problem is: I’m seeing court decisions about this every few days. And those decisions are likely just the tip of the iceberg, since many hallucinations won’t be noted in court decisions, and the great majority of court decisions are state trial court decisions that don’t show up on Westlaw.
Here’s an example: In Judge Margaret Strickland’s decision last week in Dehghani v. Castro (D.N.M.), a filing “cited to numerous cases that Respondents were ‘unable to locate.'” When asked about this by the Magistrate Judge (Damian Martinez), the petitioner’s lawyer explained “that he ‘did not have the time to devote to the project'” and had used “a company called LAWCLERK” to find a contract attorney who would write the filing.
Mr. Millan [the petitioner’s lawyer] further advised that he “did not read the caselaw or verify the cases used in support of the propositions [in the Brief], trusting that the licensed lawyer from Lawclerk would perform her work in an ethical and competent manner.” …
Mr. Millan confirmed that the cases listed by the Court in its third Order to Show Cause do not exist. Specifically, Mr. Millan stated that when his staff asked Ms. Lewis [the contract lawyer] for PDF copies of the cases she used in the purchased response, she provided seven cases. A review of the cases provided revealed that the case names and citations did not match those listed in Petitioner’s Response to the second Order to Show Cause.
Although Petitioner’s response states that the case citations are corrected, in the March 26, 2025 hearing, Mr. Millan stated the cases he listed as corrected citations were cases that he believed most closely reflected the non-existent cases cited in the Petitioner’s March 7, 2025 Response. Mr. Millan’s response further explains that the remaining thirteen ca
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