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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9699411" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I've been occupied lately, but I hope that this helps a little. I read the opinion in order to understand a few things. I hadn't paid attention after the first two pages of comments, so I apologize if this was covered elsewhere, but a few procedural issues need to be brought up.1. I don't mean to absolve the judge, but the original order wasn't the judge's fault, technically. This was a state court decision. The way a lot of state court proceedings work is this- both side submit filings (a motion and a response, for example) and there is a hearing. The judge reads the filings and listens to the arguments, and decides at the hearing who "won." The winning side writes the order based on the hearing and submits the order to chambers for the judge's signature. This might sound weird, but that's common practice in a lot of state courts for most hearings. Also, most state court judges, especially in areas like family law (this was family law) don't have clerks. 2. So what happened is that some attorney likely submitted a filing (with hallucinated authority) and then argued to the court at a hearing and won the hearing. The winning attorney then submitted the order to the Court that the Court signed ... based on the same hallucinated authority. 3. This order was appealed. This is where it gets fun! Because the appellate court was like, "Not only were the cases cited in the order hallucinated, but the cases you cited to us in your appellate brief? Those were hallucinated, too."4. Next procedural issue- the appellate court was limited in its review because there was no transcript of the hearing to determine exactly what happened. And limited in the sanctions it could impose on the attorney (a $2500 judgment against the attorney). I don't know enough about the specific issues, but I wish that they could have at least required the attorney to provide the order to the Georgia Bar- perhaps the trial court will do that on remand.So here's the thing. If you're an attorney, you know (or should know, given the widespread publicity) that using AI can, and will, cause these issues. You are an officer of the Court- you do, in fact, have an obligation to provide correct authority to the Court (and to correct authority when it is incorrect, withdrawn, etc.). That's a bedrock principle of the law.If you are using AI in this manner, not only should you face severe sanctions for the use of it, but I will bet that your billing records are also suspect- how can you bill for drafting something that you can't be bothered to even check? And so on. For those stating that this is "just a tool," well ... sure. Kind of. But attorneys have to sign filings with the Court- and that means that if an AI wrote your work, you are signing your name to work that you don't understand. On the broader scale, as more people use AI and see it work well ... some percentage of the time ... without understanding that it works disastrously that other percentage of the time? If you don't warn people, that's not a user problem. That's a defective tool.</blockquote>

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