Watched a judge tear into a lawyer for using AI to write a brief

Saw this in small claims court last month in Cleveland. The lawyer cited cases that didn't exist and the judge asked him if he even read what he filed before signing it. Has anyone else seen judges getting strict about this stuff?

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grace_fox31mo ago

A buddy of mine is a public defender in Akron. He said they had a case where the prosecutor's office tried to pull the same stunt in a motions hearing. The judge made them walk through each case citation out loud while everyone just sat there waiting. You could see the assistant sweating because he clearly hadn't read any of them. It's getting bad enough that a few local judges are now putting a note in their standing orders that any AI-generated content gets automatically thrown out unless someone swears under oath they verified every single fact. Some lawyers are going to learn the hard way that making up fake cases is a fast track to getting sanctioned.

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eva_garcia561mo ago

Is it just me or does this whole AI in law thing feel like a symptom of a bigger problem? Like, @grace_fox3, your buddy's story about the prosecutor sweating through fake citations reminds me of how people use autocorrect and spell check to cover up not knowing how to write. My nephew tried to use ChatGPT to write a school essay and the teacher caught him because it had a fake quote from a book that didn't exist. It's like we're all learning shortcuts that make us look smart but don't actually teach us the hard stuff.

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