this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/35742052

An Arizona federal court issued extensive sanctions against attorney Maren Bam on August 14, 2025, after finding that her brief contained multiple artificial intelligence-generated citations to non-existent cases. The sanctions include revocation of pro hac vice status, striking the brief, and mandatory notification to state bar authorities.

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[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 15 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

All the prior cases from these chatGPT lawyers should be reviewed. What other shortcuts were they taking before? Did an innocent person end up in jail because of some prior negligence?

[–] druidjaidan@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

A very small minority of lawyers work criminal cases.

This lawyer in particular only works on Social Security Disabilty claims.

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

I don't trust lawyers at all

[–] dan@upvote.au 40 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm amazed that these lawyers are using things like ChatGPT, when better solutions exist for the legal industry. The big legal databases (like LexisNexis) have their own AI tools that will give you actual useful results, since they're trained on caselaw from the database rather than just using a generic model, and link to the relevant cases so you can verify them yourself.

[–] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] dan@upvote.au 4 points 3 hours ago

No, but law firms generally subscribe to these databases.

At least where I live, lawyers can also go to the local law library to use LexisNexis for free.

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 26 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

How naïve it was of me, to think that the New York Avianca case in 2023 was high profile enough for lawyers to have learnt their lesson, but nope, it's getting worse each and every month that goes by:

https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/

It doesn't help that the most common outcomes there are "Warning" or a fine in the low thousands. If a legal practice can save $500,000 a year on avoiding doing their own research, and the worse that's likely to happen is "Warning" or a $2,000 fine, then why would they not?

[–] Decq@lemmy.world 21 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

How are they not immediately disbarred for this? Surely fabricating documents and citations gets you disbarred right?

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 19 points 11 hours ago

It doesnt, but it should. Its malpractice of the highest degree and shows clear disregard for properly representing a client

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 14 points 13 hours ago

It's happening in Australia too. The headline in this article needs some work.

I propose:

"Soon to be disbarred King's Council used Assumed Intelligence instead of Actual Intelligence to argue a murder case"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-15/victoria-lawyer-apologises-after-ai-generated-submissions/105661208

[–] raman_klogius@ani.social 8 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

Lawyers took the techbros' blue pill

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Why should you have to learn law if your are a lawyer?

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Most of them don't