After seeing yet another story about filings with fake case citations, I’ve done the math and concluded we will keep seeing them indefinitely.

The latest instance of filings with fake case citations was covered by Bob Ambrogi in his excellent LawSites blog (Federal Court Suspends Florida Attorney Over Filing Fabricated Cases Hallucinated by AI, available here), which has a great graphic, BTW. As Bob states in his post:

“On March 8, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida suspended attorney Thomas Grant Neusom from practicing in that court for one year, after which he will be eligible to apply for reinstatement.

In ordering the suspension, the court adopted the report and recommendation of its grievance committee, which issued a report in January finding that Neusom violated rules of the court and Florida’s Rules of Professional Conduct through a series of actions, including having filed pleadings that contained frivolous legal arguments based on fabricated cases.”

The first link in the paragraph above is to the order from John E. Steele, Senior District Judge for the Middle District of Florida. Neusom is suspended “from the Bar of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida for a period of one (1) year.” That suspension is set to commence 30 days from the date of the order so that Neusom can address his existing case load.

Look at everything Neusom has to do before he can petition for reinstatement:

• Attend and complete The Florida Bar’s Professionalism Workshop;
• Attend and complete all aspects of a Law Practice Management CLE;
• Attend and complete all aspects of the Practicing with Professionalism CLE;
• Receive Counseling through the Florida Lawyers Assistance Program;
• Pay all outstanding monetary sanctions, fees, and costs levied against him, in any federal, state, or disciplinary actions;
• Complete all remediation ordered by The Florida Bar, if any;
• Complete all remediation ordered by any court, including reporting of any sanction orders levied by any court to the appropriate parties;
• Re-read the Florida Rules of Professional Conduct and the Local Rules of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in full and certify in writing to this Court that he has done so; and
• Report to the Court the completion of all the items above on or before the date marking the end of the suspension period.

Wow.

Bob’s post provides more details on this latest instance, including Neusom’s less than proactive response in addressing the issue with the Court.

Since today is the Ides of March, maybe I should ask: “Et tu Neuse?” 😮

Regardless, the latest story about filings with fake case citations from lawyers (after others I’ve covered here, here, here and here) got me thinking: How many more could there be? Surely every lawyer knows by now that output from generative AI programs must be verified before including it into a filing. Right?

Then, I started thinking about how many lawyers there are in the US. And decided to look that up. I would have guessed we have maybe 200,000 to 300,000 lawyers in the US.

My guess was WAY off.

According to the ABA, “There are more than 1.3 million lawyers in the United States. To be more precise, there were 1,331,290 active lawyers as of Jan. 1, 2023”.

Gee, I thought it was HARD to become a lawyer! Just kidding…sort of. 😉

That means over 1.3 million lawyers need to get the message genAI models can hallucinate and that output from ChatGPT and other genAI models needs to be verified. What are the chances of that? Pretty much non-existent.

Even if we get the word out to 99.9 percent of lawyers out there, leaving only 0.1 percent that might not get the word and might submit an unchecked case filing using ChatGPT, that’s still about 1,331 attorneys who won’t know to do that. Or that may not be fully aware of their ethical obligations regarding technology competence and understanding AI (even though they should be). Or that may just try to do enough in their jobs to get by. What could we expect from the bottom 0.1 percent of any profession?

Sure, but you may be thinking: “there’s no way 1.3 million lawyers are submitting filings in courts around the US”. Fair point. Let’s say at least 10 percent of lawyers do. That’s still 133 attorneys who might submit filings with fake case citations. So far, I’ve covered five to eight of them.

Sure, this may be a silly math exercise on a Friday, but my point is that it’s really hard to fully educate 1.3 million lawyers on anything. Especially when the technology seems so easy and helpful.

And don’t get me started on the non-lawyers who have submitted filings with fake case citations as pro se parties. I’ve already covered two of those (here and here). The sky is the limit there.

So, expect to continue to see stories about filings with fake case citations for the foreseeable future – if not covered by me, then covered by others. They will continue to happen. Don’t believe me? Just do the math.

So, what do you think? Will we ever stop seeing filings with fake case citations due to generative AI? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.