I was expecting that at $2,500 it was going to be some small tort case, but no, it was levied by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for “…frustration that lawyers continue to submit briefs containing AI-generated fictitious case citations and other hallucinated material…” (emphasis mine)
It’s astonishing to me the fines aren’t in the $30,000 range considering the immense potential for damage and the wasted time, resources and costs of several attorneys, clerks, witnesses, the judge/panel, administrators, assistants, etc.
Frankly, shouldn’t that be a clear reason to be disbarred? Imagine if before AI you simply just made up case law and fabricated claims/data! That would have been at the very least immediate disciplinary measures/suspension.
And these are people who charge anywhere from $300-2500/hr, just having AI generate their work. Imagine if an attorney, pre-AI had simply hired someone on Fiverr or something to write their appellate brief.
They can’t even be bothered to read and correct the filings? What is it they are actually doing for the billed hours??? Isn’t that also criminal fraud in several ways?
The size of sanctions in similar situations will increase as time goes on. But $300,000 or $3,000,000 sanctions in a federal appellate court, as suggested by another comment, are unlikely and would happen in only the most extreme cases. Such sanctions would bankrupt most lawyers and firms. In all my years of practice I've never seen sanctions that high, ever.
Indeed, sanctions in an appellate court, especially a federal one, are uncommon — mostly because the quality of the advocates and the advocacy is relatively high there.
It bears noting that this case involved a repeat-offender firm (the case itself was an appeal of a sanctions order).
I was expecting that at $2,500 it was going to be some small tort case, but no, it was levied by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for “…frustration that lawyers continue to submit briefs containing AI-generated fictitious case citations and other hallucinated material…” (emphasis mine)
It’s astonishing to me the fines aren’t in the $30,000 range considering the immense potential for damage and the wasted time, resources and costs of several attorneys, clerks, witnesses, the judge/panel, administrators, assistants, etc.
Frankly, shouldn’t that be a clear reason to be disbarred? Imagine if before AI you simply just made up case law and fabricated claims/data! That would have been at the very least immediate disciplinary measures/suspension.
And these are people who charge anywhere from $300-2500/hr, just having AI generate their work. Imagine if an attorney, pre-AI had simply hired someone on Fiverr or something to write their appellate brief.
They can’t even be bothered to read and correct the filings? What is it they are actually doing for the billed hours??? Isn’t that also criminal fraud in several ways?
The size of sanctions in similar situations will increase as time goes on. But $300,000 or $3,000,000 sanctions in a federal appellate court, as suggested by another comment, are unlikely and would happen in only the most extreme cases. Such sanctions would bankrupt most lawyers and firms. In all my years of practice I've never seen sanctions that high, ever.
Indeed, sanctions in an appellate court, especially a federal one, are uncommon — mostly because the quality of the advocates and the advocacy is relatively high there.
It bears noting that this case involved a repeat-offender firm (the case itself was an appeal of a sanctions order).
$30,000 still seems low. I'd say they should be ten or a hundred times that. And yes, disbarment should be considered too.
As with