The Guardian
Legal professional used software to generate a case citation list, but did not use documents that had undergone human verification
A Melbourne lawyer has been referred to the Victorian legal complaints body after admitting to using artificial intelligence software in a family court case that generated false case citations and caused a hearing to be adjourned.
In a 19 July 2024 hearing, an anonymous solicitor representing a husband in a dispute between a married couple provided the court with a list of prior cases that had been requested by Justice Amanda Humphreys in relation to an enforcement application in the case.
When Humphreys returned to her chambers, she said in a ruling that neither herself nor her associates were able to identify the cases in the list. When the matter returned to court the lawyer confirmed that the list had been prepared using legal software Leap, and he said there was an AI element to Leap’s software.
He acknowledged he did not verify the accuracy of the information before submitting it to the court.
In the initial ruling, first reported by Crikey, the lawyer was given a month to respond as to why he should not be referred to the Legal Services Board and Commissioner for investigation, and in a ruling from August and published this month, Humphreys referred the solicitor for investigation.
In her ruling, Humphreys says the solicitor admitted the AI software had been used to generate the list but it had not been reviewed by he or anyone else, and the cases were not real.
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