Attorneys May Have to Ask Expert Witnesses "Whether They Have Used AI in Drafting Their Declarations and What They Have Done to Verify Any AI-Generated Content"

From Kohls v. Ellison, which I quoted more extensively in an earlier post:

To be sure, Attorney General Ellison maintains that his office had no idea that Professor Hancock's declaration included fake citations, and counsel for the Attorney General sincerely apologized at oral argument for the unintentional fake citations in the Hancock Declaration. The Court takes Attorney General Ellison at his word and appreciates his candor in rectifying the issue.

But Attorney General Ellison's attorneys are reminded that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 imposes a "personal, nondelegable responsibility" to "validate the truth and legal reasonableness of the papers filed" in an action. The Court suggests that an "inquiry reasonable under the circumstances," Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b), may now require attorneys to ask their witnesses whether they have used AI in drafting their declarations and what they have done to verify any AI-generated content.

Thanks to Prof. Anthony Bushnell for pointing out the significance of this particular passage.

Comments

[Flight-ER-Doc]

That seems perfectly reasonable.

[Not a Conservative but a Biden LOATHER]

Why does that seem reasonable?
And why do you use "seem" ?
In the "chain of evidence"/"chain of custody" --- well, that can be a mightly long chain. It took them ages to find out Harvard's President plagaiarized with Biden abandon.

[Don Nico]

It is what I will ask of students in my class this spring

[Roger S]

This is like telling people, a few years ago, to verify everything found on Google, or on Wikipedia. Yes, everything in an affidavit should be correct and defensible.

[SgtDad]

Ummm, … I was taught as a rookie associate to find and verify every citation in an expert’s declaration. And so I taught my associates. Good lawyers don’t do this? Really?

[Life of Brian]

Agree -- I can't fathom sending an expert dec/report out the door on blind faith like this. The expert opinions themselves aren't always as easy to sanity check (and are just opinions anyway, not appeals to absolute truth), but discussions of/citations to source material absolutely can and should be. Even putting this latest wrinkle aside, typos happen when entering citations, and even good cites can get shifted around or otherwise broken as a document evolves, etc. etc.

[Commenter_XY]

Why did this even happen in the first place, is what I would ask AG Ellison. Why was it ever an issue to begin with.

[Michael Ejercito]

Attorneys May Have to Ask Expert Witnesses "Whether They Have Used AI a first-year undergraduate student/some wino on the street/a stray cat in Drafting Their Declarations and What They Have Done to Verify Any AIa first-year law student/some wino on the street/a stray cat-Generated Content"

HTML makes making analogies so easy.

This is not a new principle.

Attorneys, especially on cross-examination, have always had to ask expert witnesses how they verified their conclusions.

Expe

[Bored Lawyer]

LOL.