Judge Slams Lawyers For Bogus AI-Generated Research

A California judge slammed a pair of law firms for the undisclosed use of AI after he received a supplemental brief with “numerous false, inaccurate, and misleading legal citations and quotations.” In a ruling submitted last week, Judge Michael Wilner imposed $31,000 in sanctions against the law firms involved, saying “no reasonably competent attorney should out-source research and writing” to AI, as pointed out by law professors Eric Goldman and Blake Reid on Bluesky.

“I read their brief, was persuaded (or at least intrigued) by the authorities that they cited, and looked up the decisions to learn more about them — only to find that they didn’t exist,” Judge Milner writes. “That’s scary. It almost led to the scarier outcome (from my perspective) of including those bogus materials in a judicial order.”