Oopsie daisy!

All the hype surrounding artificial intelligence is amusing, until you consider how big a market crash is waiting to happen because of it. Anyway, here's a new Oregon Court of Appeals decision, in a case where it appears that a lawyer foolishly relied on A.I. to do his research for him. The 'bot apparently wound up hallucinating, generating fake law. Now the lawyer's going to have to pay a fine, and discipline by the state bar may not be far behind. Let it be a warning, kids.

The court said:

This is an exceptionally grave situation for at least three reasons.

First, it is a breach of the attorney’s professional duties. The Oregon State Bar has explained: “The most obvious way in which a lawyer could run afoul of Oregon [Rules of Professional Conduct (RPC)] 3.3 [Candor] and 4.1 [Truthfulness] is through the submission of and reliance on unverified and fictitious cases, citations, quotes, or conclusions generated by AI. Therefore, to avoid violation of Oregon RPCs 3.3 and 4.1, lawyers must review for accuracy any [generative artificial intelligence (GAI)] out-ut discussing case-specific facts or providing a case citation, quotation, or conclusion to ensure that the GAI did not hallucinate when providing its answer, or simply get the answer wrong.” Oregon State Bar, Formal Opinion No. 2025-205, Artificial Intelligence Tools (February 2025) (footnote omitted).

Second, it strains our limited judicial resources. Every hour spent addressing false citations and statements of law is an hour diverted from those matters in which attorneys have supported their arguments with precedent that exists. Although artificial intelligence programs may seem to offer a shortcut for a busy attorney in an individual case, at present, they may create a long cut to justice. Every single time a lawyer relies on false authority, the court will need to take the time to address the situation to, at a minimum, ensure that the public retains confidence that the courts are not relying on fabricated law.

Third, by building and submitting arguments based on nonexistent cases and principles of law, and by failing to take the time to develop competency in the cases and principles of law that do in fact exist, the attorney is engaging in conduct that jeopardizes the rule of law. Judicial precedent is the backbone of the rule of law. By reviewing and applying precedent to each case that comes before it, a court ensures that similarly situated parties are treated equally and that differences in treatment are justified by principled reasons. It is by studying, learning, and applying precedent, that we maintain the rule of law and develop the competency needed to maintain the rule of law. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist Paper No. 78,

“It has been frequently remarked * * * that a voluminous code of laws is one of the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free government. To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; and it will readily be conceived from the variety of controversies which grow out of the folly and wickedness of mankind, that the records of those precedents must unavoidably swell to a very considerable bulk, and must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge of them.” The Federalist No. 78, at 141 (R. B. Bernstein ed., 2024).

The injection of false precedent into the practice of law shakes the foundation of our judicial system. Although courts no doubt are equipped to catch false citations and statements of law, as noted above, any time we must spend verifying and directing attorneys to address a false statement of law is time away from our core mission: deciding cases that have been briefed under law that, in fact, exists.

UPDATE, shortly thereafter: And a similar thing happened in federal district court in Portland earlier this fall. Judge Michael Simon's surprisingly restrained opinion is here.