Court holds lawyer accountable for AI hallucinations

An Alberta court found that the filing of legal briefs that included non-existent precedents that were made up by an AI tool amounted to serious misconduct — and it ordered costs against a lawyer personally.

In a decision last year, the Court of Appeal of Alberta allowed an appeal, in part, but also raised the issue of whether the appellant’s counsel should face costs for making legal filings that referenced non-existent cases — the filings were drafted by an external contractor that used generative AI, which cited several precedents that were apparently made up by the AI. 

According to the court, the counsel who used the false precedents argued that the court should only award enhanced costs where there is fraudulent or deceitful conduct, and not for his “inadvertent use of AI hallucinations.” 

The respondent’s counsel argued that a costs award should be imposed to hold the lawyer accountable, to compensate them for the added work required to deal with the fake precedents, and to deter others from similar conduct.

Ultimately, the court found that “the unchecked use of AI undeniably resulted in a misleading factum being filed with the court and led to a waste of time and resources.”

Among other things, the respondents to the appeal had to search for cases that didn’t exist, and address the issue in their filings. This created a problem for court personnel to deal with too.

The court concluded that “in the specific circumstances of this case, there is sufficiently serious misconduct to warrant a costs award … payable by appellant’s lead counsel, personally.”

It ordered that the lawyer must pay $17,550.00 plus GST as a result.

James Langton

James is a senior reporter for Advisor.ca and its sister publication, Investment Executive. He has been reporting on regulation, securities law, industry news and more since 1994.