Michael Karlik
A Colorado lawyer has received a suspension for using artificial intelligence to generate fake case citations in a legal brief and then lying about it.
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In the agreed-upon narrative by Crabill and attorney regulators filed with the office of the presiding disciplinary judge, Crabill’s firm took on a client in April who had previously represented themselves. An El Paso County judge denied the client’s motion for summary judgment in a civil case, and Crabill’s job was to draft a motion to set aside the decision.
Crabill “had never drafted a MSA. He went through past motions from the firm and sought to find templates for making an argument to set aside the judgment,” the filing stated.
After filling in the template with case-specific details, Crabill wanted to bolster his legal citations. He used the AI program ChatGPT to search for cases that appeared to support his client’s position. In the belief that he was using his client’s money efficiently and reducing his own stress close to the deadline, he added the AI case citations to his brief without verifying their accuracy.
Read more at Colorado Politics.