Passing AI-generated "research" to your own lawyer to file
Negligent and reckless land in different places. Neither is a place you want to explain how you got there.
Not legal advice. Sally roasts behaviour and use-cases in general, never your specific situation, and nothing here replaces a real lawyer. The cases are real; what you do about them is between you and someone licensed to tell you.
A non-lawyer feeding AI-generated case citations to their attorney to put into a filing.
United States v. Cohen (In re Cohen)
S.D.N.Y., order Mar. 2024 (docket-level) · US (S.D.N.Y.)
Michael Cohen passed fake case citations generated by Google Bard, which he thought was a supercharged search engine, to his lawyer, who filed them.
Judge Furman declined to sanction, calling the conduct negligent but not bad faith. A near miss, not a safe harbour.
There is a real, narrow line here. In one matter a defendant passed fake citations from a chatbot to his lawyer, who filed them. The judge declined to sanction, calling the conduct negligent rather than bad faith. That is not a safe harbour. It is a near miss that depended on the specific facts.
The contrast with the famous sanctions cases is the whole lesson: the difference between a fine and a pass can come down to intent, and you do not get to decide after the fact which side of that line a court will put you on.
“You got off because the judge believed you were merely careless. That is the compliment you were fighting for?”
- 01If you hand your lawyer research, tell them exactly where it came from so they can verify it properly.
- 02Do not present AI output as if you confirmed it. Let the professional treat it as raw and unchecked.
- 03Assume any citation you did not pull yourself is unverified until a qualified person says otherwise.
Not legal advice. General commentary on a use-case, not your situation. Talk to a real lawyer before you act.