Sloppy AI use gets two California lawyers suspended for six months, fined
A federal appeals court fined two Southern California lawyers $2,500 each and suspended them from practice in the court for six months Wednesday after finding that they used artificial intelligence to cite nonexistent cases to the court and then claimed they hadn't knowingly done so.
The attorneys Mike Singh Sethi and William Rounds, who share an office in the city of Orange, filed briefs in an immigration case that contained "gross misrepresentations of real cases" and, when called to account, blamed "innocent typographical mistakes" and denied any use of AI, said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Questioned at a hearing in October, Rounds said it was "possible" the staff member who drafted the briefs, a non-attorney, had relied on AI for their content, the court said. He told the judges that the firm has now hired a lawyer to review all future briefs before they are submitted, but the court said that wasn't enough.
Sethi, who heads the law firm, "violated his duties of competence and diligence," and both lawyers "violated their duty of candor when they represented the errors as innocent typographical mistakes," the three-judge panel wrote.
"While not inherently unethical or irresponsible, using generative AI without rigorously checking its output does present a higher risk of violating certain ethical and procedural rules," the court said. While citing fictitious cases is more serious, the judges said, inaccurate case citations "may prove more dangerous to our profession in the long run."
Sethi and Rounds must notify all clients and attorneys at the firm about their discipline and declare in future filings, under penalty of perjury, whether AI had been used in the case.
For now, however, the court did not withdraw or order reconsideration of its November ruling in the immigration case that granted a request by Sethi and Bounds to halt the deportation of three family members from India.
The three immigrants had applied for U.S. asylum and claimed they would be subjected to torture or other abuse if deported. The court said federal officials had refused to consider their claims without providing legitimate reasons for their refusal, and ordered an immigration agency to address the evidence cited by the family members.
The panel consisted of Judges Richard Paez, appointed by President Bill Clinton; Carlos Bea, appointed by President George W. Bush; and Danielle Forrest, appointed by President Donald Trump.
Sethi and Rounds did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Since 2022, lawyers in the United States and worldwide have increasingly relied on AI to conduct research and draft legal arguments far more quickly and at less expense to the firms than would be required for staff. And oversight agencies have found that many firms fail to assign licensed attorneys to check the filings for "hallucinations" - citations of cases that do not exist or fail to support the arguments they cite in the filings.
One recent report found 957 U.S. cases, and almost 1,400 worldwide, in which nonexistent or falsely cited cases were the apparent product of AI. And several courts have penalized attorneys for citing fictitious cases in their written arguments.
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