Law Practice Management Tips & Tricks

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 92 No. 4 Pg. 08
• Publication year: 2023
• Pages: 08

Law Practice Management Tips & Tricks No. 92 J. Kan. Bar Assn 4, 08 (2023) Kansas Bar Journal August, 2023

July, 2023

Artificial Intelligence Goes to Court

By Larry N. Zimmerman, Zimmerman & Zimmerman P.A.

Earlier this year I wrote that ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence apps were poised for an appearance in court. An internet entrepreneur was angling for volunteers willing to be represented in traffic court by ChatGPT. That plan hit a variety of predictable roadblocks and has not happened yet. However, ChatGPT just made its first publicized appearance in court, and it did not go well.

By all appearances, Roberto Mata v. Avianca, Inc. before the Southern District of New York (22-cv-1461) was a routine personal injury case until plaintiff's counsel opposed the defendant's motion to dismiss. That opposition included several suspicious case citations that defendant's counsel indicated they could not locate. The court ordered plaintiff's counsel to provide copies of the cases cited in his submission, and plaintiff's counsel did so in the form of a sworn affidavit.

That affidavit prompted an immediate letter to the court from the defendant's counsel, noting that, "Defendant respectfully submits that the authenticity of many of these cases is questionable." Counsel could not locate six of the cited cases, and two were located but addressed issues unrelated to the plaintiff's purpose in citing them.

The...