Lawyer's Affidavit in the Colorado AI-Hallucinated Precedent Case

"Overwhelmingly impressed by the technology, I excitedly used it to find case law that supports my client's position, or so I thought."

Thanks to the invaluable UCLA Law Library, I got a copy of the affidavit in which the lawyer apologizes and explains why he used ChatGPT to draft a motion:

I have been practicing Civil Litigation for less than three (3) months and the MSA was the first motion I have ever researched, drafted, and filed myself….

As of today, May 5, 2023, I have spent 6.5 hours researching this case, conferring with paralegals and senior attorneys about our client's options, and drafting the MSA. With respect to drafting the MSA specifically, I have spent approximately 4 hours researching, drafting, and revising that motion. I detail this in hopes to demonstrate to the Court my dutiful time spent drafting a motion that I hoped would relieve my client from an exceptional judgment against him.

Now I will explain the fictitious case cite issue to assuage the Court's concern of willful misconduct. The issue surrounds the emerging technological advancement and use of Artificial Intelligence, commonly referred to as "AI". AI for the legal industry is emerging, and coincidentally on 5/5 I received an email from Lexis Nexis introducing an AI search engine for their platform – Meet Lexis+ AI, the most powerful generative AI solution for legal professionals - YouTube (see Exhibit 1 – Email from Lexis+ AI). In this instance, a search engine/software from OpenAI, commonly known as "ChatGPT" was used. This software was brought to my attention as a potentially useful research tool for our firm on April 26, 2023, just three (3) days before the MSA was finalized and filed. Overwhelmingly impressed by the technology, I excitedly used it to find case law that supports my client's position, or so I thought.

As a new attorney practicing in the civil litigation field with which I was unfamiliar, ChatGPT was very impressive and excited me for several reasons. As a prosecutor, I rarely conducted legal research and writing and to the extent I did, I used templates from other prosecutors with case law and statutory authority built in. Ergo, the primary reason I explored ChatGPT and decidedly utilized it for the MSA was that I felt my lack of experience in legal research and writing, and consequently, my efficiency in this regard could be exponentially augmented to the benefit of my clients by expediting the time-intensive research portion of drafting.

There were several inquiries/prompts given to ChatGPT that proved accurate based on my existing knowledge of the law and what I confirmed through research, such that I made the imprudent leap in assuming that the tool would be generally accurate. (See Exhibit 2 – Export of ChatGPT Dialog_1) As you can see from the Dialog, the AI model generated a number of responses, for all intents and purposes, which appear very thorough and accurate. (See Exhibit 3 – Export of ChatGPT Dialog_2) Unfortunately, by the time I actually started using ChatGPT for case law research on the MSA, I was already convinced of its apparent trustworthiness. As you can see from Dialog_2, ChatGPT cites a number of cases as requested, but if you look for them, they do not exist. Based on the accuracy of prior validated responses, and the apparent accuracy of the case law citations, it never even dawned on me that this technology could be deceptive. In short, the initial confirmatory searches emboldened my confidence in the technology and I imprudently accepted the case law research that followed without investigation into each case citation's accuracy.

It wasn't until the morning of the Show Cause Hearing on 5/5 that I, in an effort to prepare to argue the case law cited, dug deeper to realize the inaccuracies of the citations. (See Exhibit 4 – Screenshot of Teams Message with Paralegal) As you can see, I was unaware of what to do in that situation and I was unaware of my ability and obligation to withdraw the motion due to the inaccuracies. In hindsight, the first thing I should have done when your Honor took the bench was move to withdraw the motion and request leave to refile after curing the inaccuracies. Rule 3.3 of the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct requires a mental state of "knowingly" which denotes actual knowledge. Prior to filing the MSA, I did not have actual knowledge of the inaccuracies, proven by Exhibit 4, otherwise, I would have never filed it.

This has been a tremendously humbling, yet growing experience for me as a budding civil litigation attorney. I have learned the importance and absolute necessity of thoroughly vetting each pleading before signing my name to it and filing it with the Court. I sincerely and wholeheartedly regret having wasted the Court's time in this instance and humbly ask for your Honor's grace moving forward. I did not and I never will intentionally mislead a court of law, or anyone for that matter, as I hold myself to a Higher Standard than even the Colorado Bar Association and the Colorado Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

I respectfully request that the Court excuse the inaccuracies found in the MSA, permit Defendant to file an Amended MSA, and accept Exhibits 1, 2, 3, and 4 as evidence of good faith and not willful misconduct….

I don't know whether the judge was satisfied with this; the June 13 KRDO article (Quinn Ritzdorf) reports,

The judge overseeing the hearing … [had] threatened to file a complaint against the attorney. The Office of Attorney Regulations couldn't confirm if a complaint had been filed against Crabill.

Comments

[Bob from Ohio]

"I don't know whether the judge was satisfied with this"

He should be, at least to not make a bar complaint. Probably a modest fine though.

Dumb kids are dumb.

[Bored Lawyer]

No. If he is a dumb kid, he should not be representing clients. Lawyers can cause tremendous harm to clients and their cases. If you don't know what you are doing, apprentice yourself to someone who does know, and learn. A law degree and bar admission do NOT mean you know what you are doing.

Imagine a surgeon who said the same thing. "I've only been doing surgery for three months, and was overly impressed with this surgery machine. Little did I know it would cut the patient's heart out."

[Dr. Ed 2]

My surgeon, who has impressive credentials (head of department in a medical school, etc.) told me that he stays with surgery, which he knows, and out of other fields of medicine.

One of his students told me what it would be before she could become a surgeon -- after graduating medical school, she would have to do a residency, and then a specialty, and then something else. Memory is that it would be seven years after becoming a MD, with several sets of exams she would have to pass.

As I understand it, one can have a medical license, and even a surgeon license(?) but *still* had to have an accredited hospital had to decide that you were competent before they would let you perform surgery at their hospital. Maybe the legal profession should do the same thing -- just because you are a lawyer not being enough to permit you to practice in this court...

[ducksalad]

My brother-in-law (ob-gyn) claims it’s generally acknowledged in med school that as a rough order of magnitude average, training new residents results in one extra patient death per doctor produced.

Can’t learn without making some mistakes.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I saw a John Hopkins calculation of medical error fatalities and it appears that medical errors kill at least ten TIMES more people than drunk drivers do.

[ducksalad]

I can believe it, especially if one does Covid style counting where the medical error counts if it pushes someone over the line who was marginal to begin with.

Fortunately, a doctor outright killing a healthy young person is pretty rare, I think.

[Sarcastr0]

28 per day is the last drunk driving figure I heard. So 10220 per year. The JHU study found 250,000 per year.

It's a big deal. But your math is, unsurprisingly, screwy.

[Bob from Ohio]

Glad to meet someone who has never made a mistake.

[Not Unreasonable]

Even humans and respected treatises make mistakes. I had a case where the attorney for the other side evidently took the summary from a respected digest and cited it for his main argument. I actually read the case and pointed out that the opinion stated the exact opposite than the digest summary.

Later in life, I read a treatise citing a case that seemed to mandate dismissing an appeal for being out of time. I Keycited it and found no red or yellow flags. The response pointed out a later case directly contrary to the one I cited but the opinion never mentioned the case I cited. I withdrew my motion and explained what happened, with copies of the Kecite search I had done.

Still later, in an answer to a habeas petition, I argued the controlling cases at the time of my pleading. More than a year passed before the magistrate judge made his report and recommendation to dismiss all claims. He agreed with my argument but the law had changed and I had failed to notify the court of the change—out of sight and out of mind. I had to file an exception to the report, explain what happened, and then make an alternative argument (which was also a winner).

So everybody makes mistakes, but it’s what you do or don’t do to fix them that gets you in trouble.

[Orbital Mechanic]

ChatGPT is a tool. Not an oracle. Not even a human mind. It is a tool.

Any tool can be misused. The more powerful a tool is the more dangerous it becomes if misused.

ChatGPT has transformed my work as a software engineer. It often gives me results that have errors in them, but I have the skills to correct those errors and move on. At the end of the day I have saved a lot of time completing the task at hand because ChatGPT did what it is good at, and what it is not good at doesn't matter.

If our hapless Colorado attorney had approached this tool with this in mind he would never have gotten into trouble.

[Jerry B.]

“Congratulations for being a part of the ChatGPT Beta test. We apologize if it took your cites into the realm of fantasy (somewhat like your sex life). Be aware that we’re not responsible for any corporal punishment the court may inflict on you by way of S&M mistresses from Venus. Good luck with your career as a sleazy lawyer.”

“This note sent by ChatGPT”

[Dr. Ed 2]

Not reading the cases I can understand, not understanding them I can almost expect, but not having a paralegal check to at least verify that the cites are correct?

Not that you imagine that the cases don't exist, nor really expect to find a typo in the cite, but this is his first motion.

And this idiot apparently passed the bar exam....

[Dr. Ed 2]

"I have been practicing Civil Litigation for less than three (3) months and the MSA was the first motion I have ever researched, drafted, and filed myself…"

In other words, I was not competent to represent this client or to appear before this court, but I did so anyway.

While bar regs vary by state, I seem to remember something in the MA regs about not practicing in a field of law one is not familiar with, unless one intends to learn the field first.

[Jerry B.]

He was a prosecutor before.

“As a prosecutor, I rarely conducted legal research and writing and to the extent I did, I used templates from other prosecutors with case law and statutory authority built in.”

Gives you even more confidence in our judicial system, doesn’t it?

[Eugene Volokh]

My sense is that most trial-level prosecutors, especially junior ones, rarely face novel questions of law. And that's good, because it reflects that in most situations substantive and procedural criminal law is pretty well-settled. Prosecutors' (and defense lawyers') motions generally apply the settled law to facts, which often doesn't require a great deal of original legal research. (Sometimes it might, but often it doesn't, at least to my knowledge.)

[not guilty]

Except for appointment in a single criminal contempt case, I have never been a prosecutor. (Not that I couldn´t do the job, but I doubt that I could ever get used to having a stick up my butt.) Conducting criminal prosecutions in state court is about as close as the practice of law comes to shooting fish in a barrel.

[QuantumBoxCat]

As a prosecutor, I rarely conducted legal research and writing and to the extent I did, I used templates from other prosecutors with case law and statutory authority built in.

I sincerely and wholeheartedly regret having wasted the Court's time in this instance and humbly ask for your Honor's grace moving forward. I did not and I never will intentionally mislead a court of law, or anyone for that matter, as I hold myself to a Higher Standard than even the Colorado Bar Association and the Colorado Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

Oh how the turntables have turned.

[santamonica811]

1. Was it intentional, or merely (gross?) negligence? I think we all agree that it was not intentional . . . you just don't submit things like this to a court where there is an essentially 100% chance you'll be discovered.

2. What's the remedy for a negligent act here? I think reasonable people can disagree. I see strong arguments for mild punishment (eg, a fine that covers the court's time, and the entire legal expenses of the other side), or something more severe (eg, the same fine, plus a referral to that state's Bar).

3. I was struck by a few sentences in the guy's mea culpa. For example, "...my efficiency in this regard could be exponentially augmented to the benefit of my clients..." Honestly, that reads to me like a chat bot-generated or AI-generated response. You have to admit; it would be ballsy and funny if the guy used AI to help craft his defense statement here.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I'd like to see some research on your presumption that there is a 100% chance this would be discovered as I'm not so sure. Part of my doctoral research involved discovering -- to everyone's surprise -- that a law which "everyone" involved in education in the State of Maine had believed existed, and had since the 1920s. A very embarrassed Secretary of State's Office admitted that they couldn't find it either.

This wasn't introduced into court once -- educational policy for seven generations had been based on this law existing, I was taught it existed when I got my teacher's certification, and it never had. No one ever noticed -- so I wouldn't be surprised that some citations in a legal brief might slip by.

As to his mea culpa, I've seem the same thing from undergraduates --- they are good BS artists and nothing is ever their fault. A lot went on to be either politicians or lawyers. So I'm not surprised to see third person language like this.

[ducksalad]

Ha. Same thing happened a couple times down here, although the mythical state laws were only believed in at our institution, and it only lasted for a few decades. Apparently what happened was this:

1. State law said you can’t do X or Y without an educational justification.
2. A local administrator turned down a poorly justified proposal to do X and Y, saying it violated state law. People only heard the last part.
3. For years, we all believed that you can’t do X or Y, period.
4. Finally, a state level bureaucrat berates our administration for not doing X and Y when it was clearly necessary and all the other universities did it and what the hell is wrong with you people don’t you care about education.

X and Y were limits on the max number of hours in a degree and min number of students in a class.

Glad to know we’re not the only ones.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Meanwhile, a different lawyer in another case is explaining that after dropping acid, he had such vivid insights that he could actually see the precedents scrolling out in front of him, and he didn’t think he needed to double-check all those impeccable references.

[Gasman]

“…my efficiency in this regard could be exponentially augmented to the benefit of my clients…”
I miss the early days of the pandemic, when exponentially, for a short time, actually was used correctly in describing exponential growth. Now it is merely a figurative intensifier again describing usually at best linear growth.

[Daniel Schmutter]

The huge problem here is that this kid has no idea that he needs to read the cases he cites. That’s a major issue.

It’s all well and good to use templates that cite cases as to which everyone in the office knows what they say (although you do need to make sure from time to time that they remain good law), but as to any case no one has read, you simply cannot cite it without reading it. That’s a huge no no.

That lawyer sucks.