Technology and courts have never been a great match. After all, judges are concerned with precedent, while the technology adoption process is future-facing. Certainly, the pandemic helped reduce the friction somewhat when, out of necessity, the courts acclimated to e-filing and virtual court proceedings. Some judges even acknowledged the value and convenience of online appearances for certain matters.
Despite the notable adaptation and changing attitudes, our judicial counterparts were wholly unprepared for the generative AI (GenAI) tsunami and its impact on the practice of law. Since the release of GPT-4 a year ago, lawyers have increasingly relied on the output of GenAI tools to draft and submit pleadings and memoranda to the courts, often without a full understanding of the technology and its capabilities.
As a result, many lawyers have made the news for submitting court filings with GenAI-generated fake case citations despite being repeatedly warned to carefully review all GenAI output. Judging by the uptick in headlines since the start of 2024, more lawyers than ever are relying on GenAI tools for legal research but are utterly failing to meet their ethical obligations of basic competence:
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