Deep trouble for South African lawyers that used AI to draft court papers
Pietermaritzburg-based law firm Surendra Singh and Associates is in hot water for allegedly using artificial intelligence (AI) to source what were found to be non-existent legal citations in court papers.
According to a GroundUp report, the firm could face a Legal Practice Council (LPC) investigation for the misconduct involving two court hearings in September 2024.
Judge Elsje-Marie Bezuidenhout interrogated the documents and found that only two of the nine cases cited in the papers could be found to exist, adding that the citation for one of them was incorrect.
She concluded that the firm likely had used AI technology to source the fake legal citations, describing the action as “irresponsible and downright unprofessional”.
Surendra Singh and Associates was ordered to pay the costs of the two court hearings.
The firm was representing KwaZulu-Natal politician and suspended Umvoti Mayor Godfery Mvundla. He claimed the suspension was decided during an unlawful council meeting.
Mvundla secured an interim interdict against the municipality, but Judge Bezuidenhout discharged the interdict and rescinded the order. He then applied for leave to appeal her ruling.
In this application, his legal representation — Ms S Pillay, supported by article clerk Ms R Farouk — cited non-existent case authorities to support their submission.
Bezuidenhout asked Ms Pillay to provide copies of the cited cases, which she said had been provided with the references by an “article clerk” and that she had not seen the cases as she was under a lot of pressure.
It was later revealed that Ms Farouk had drafted the notice of appeal, and she was ordered to appear before Bezuidenhout.
Farouk said she had obtained the cases from law journals during her research, but when asked which journals she could not respond.
“I asked her (Farouk) if she by any chance used an artificial intelligence application such as ChatGPT to assist with her research but she denied having done so,” Judge Bezuidenhout wrote in her ruling.
“It then came to light that the cases referenced had been sourced from an artificial intelligence chatbot, namely ChatGPT.”
“It seems to the court that they placed undue faith in the veracity of the legal research generated by artificial intelligence and lazily omitted to verify the research,” she added.
Bezuidenhout made the following order:
- The applicant’s application for leave to appeal is dismissed with costs.
- The costs incurred in respect of the additional appearances on 22 and 25 September 2024 are to be paid by Surendra Singh and Associates.
- The registrar is requested to send a copy of this judgment to the Legal Practice Council (KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Office) for its attention and further action.
She also directed that her judgement should be sent to the LPC for possible further action.
ChatGPT made-up cases
This isn’t the first time South African lawyers have been in trouble for citing fake information when using AI systems like ChatGPT.
In July 2023, lawyers arguing a case at the Johannesburg regional court were called out for including fake references.
“The names and citations are fictitious, the facts are fictitious, and the decisions are fictitious,” the judgement reads.
The lawyers’ client was slapped with a punitive costs order as a result.
They spent two months trying to track down the information referenced in the court documents but found that ChatGPT had referred to actual cases and given real citations, the citations related to different cases.
Additionally, these cases and citations were not at all appropriate for the case. The lawyers then admitted that the judgements had been sourced through ChatGPT.
South Africa isn’t the first country where legal practitioners unquestioningly believed ChatGPT and used it to support their applications.
In June 2023, US lawyers Steven Schwartz and Peter LoDuca were nailed for submitting a court brief full of false citations from ChatGPT. They were fined $5,000 (then R93,045).
US District Judge P. Kevin Castel found the lawyers and their firm had “abandoned their responsibilities when they submitted non-existent judicial opinions with fake quotes and citations created by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, then continued to stand by the fake opinions after judicial orders called their existence into question.”
The lawyers had filed the brief on Roberto Mata’s behalf. Mata claimed he had been injured on a 2019 flight between El Salvador and New York. However, his suit was also thrown out of court as it was filed too late.
Castel ordered the lawyers to send a transcript of the hearing and to each of the judges falsely identified as authors by ChatGPT.
“The Court will not require an apology from respondents because a compelled apology is not a sincere apology,” added Castel.
“Any decision to apologise is left to respondents.”
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