by Roy Strom
Two Manhattan lawyers fined $5,000 for filing a ChatGPT-generated court brief could still face additional discipline, but the public attention they’re getting may be the worst of the punishment.
Steven Schwartz and Peter LoDuca were fined by a federal judge on Thursday for submitting a brief containing bogus quotes from nonexistent cases. The lawyers will also be required to send the 34-page sanctions opinion to the real-life judges that ChatGPT said handed down the fake opinions.
“They’re lucky, but I think it’s enough of a sanction considering they’ve been the poster children for incompetent use of artificial intelligence in the practice of law,” said Jan Jacobowitz, a Miami-based legal ethics attorney. “Everybody is talking about this.”
The pair could face discipline from New York’s state bar association stemming from the use of ChatGPT, ethics experts said. US District Judge P. Kevin Castel found that at least one of the lawyers made knowingly false statements to the court and that the pair “doubled down” on the fake cases in the face of questions about the brief’s accuracy.
The embarrassment from the widespread news coverage of the case, coupled with the fines, should be enough to deter the lawyers from again falling prey to ChatGPT’s hallucinations, according to legal ethics experts.
“A litigator would have to be living under a rock not to have gotten the message already about the risks of blithely relying on ChatGPT,” said Fordham Law professor Bruce Green. “The bigger disciplinary risk relates to the lawyer’s conduct after his initial memo of law was challenged, when the lawyer failed to go back and check the cases, and instead reaffirmed their legitimacy.”
Schwartz and LoDuca “abandoned their responsibilities” as lawyers by submitting the fake case citations, Castel said in the sanctions order.
The judge slammed the pair for “doubling down” on the fake cases and only telling the truth after the court asked why they shouldn’t be sanctioned.
LoDuca also made a “knowingly false statement” to the court when he said he was on vacation in an effort to delay a court deadline, according to the sanctions order. He later testified he was not on vacation.
The New York Bar’s grievance committee is “quite likely to consider imposing some sort of discipline” from the lawyers’ conduct after submitting the brief, Green said.
The saga wasted time and hurt the lawyers’ client—who is suing Avianca Airlines, alleging he was injured on a 2019 flight from El Salvador to New York—Castel said. The episode also fuels cynicism about the legal profession and potentially harms the reputation of the judges whose names were tied to the fake opinions, he added.
“A future litigant may be tempted to defy a judicial ruling by disingenuously claiming doubt about its authenticity,” the judge wrote.
Schwartz asked the court for leniency at a hearing earlier this month, saying he “failed miserably” at verifying the cases he cited. Hewas “duped” by the chatpot launched by nonprofit OpenAI, he said, admitting “it’s embarrassing.”
His firm has agreed to hold mandatory training sessions on technological competence and artificial intelligence programs and on notarization processes, according to the opinion.
The lawyers may face a reprimand or censure from a state bar discipline proceeding, but nothing more than a “slap on the wrist,” said Michael Frisch, ethics counsel at Georgetown Law.
“These people have been pretty badly embarrassed,” Frisch said. “The publicity alone is probably a disincentive for people to engage in like conduct.”
The case is Mata v. Avianca, Inc., S.D.N.Y., 22-01461, 6/22/23
Full Article & Source:
Fake ChatGPT Cases Cost Lawyers $5,000 Plus Embarrassment
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