Perhaps the legal profession has finally found an issue everyone can agree on: Artificial intelligence is useful, unavoidable and apparently in desperate need of adult supervision.
The University of Chicago Law School said Thursday it is rolling out a new AI strategy this fall that will, among other things, pilot a general ban on electronic devices in core first-year classes, with limited exceptions. The idea is to keep students from outsourcing the hard part of law school — namely, thinking — while still teaching them how to use AI effectively and ethically once they leave the classroom.
The timing is exquisite.
While UChicago is trying to make sure future lawyers can function without a chatbot whispering in their ears, Louisiana courts are dealing with actual lawyers whose AI helpers keep inventing quotes, cases and other inconveniently nonexistent pieces of law.
As reported by The Times-Picayune and The New Orleans Advocate on that same day, more than a dozen incidents have surfaced in Louisiana state and federal courts since last August involving inaccurate or fabricated material in AI-assisted pleadings. In one case, a federal judge sanctioned an attorney after a law clerk caught a bad quote, the lawyer turned back to Claude to fix it and — in the judge’s memorable words — the program “just made up more stuff.”
That is one way to revise.
Louisiana attorneys have faced fines and sanctions over AI hallucinations, part of a much broader problem that courts are struggling to contain. One lawyer promised that, going forward, a human clerk would double-check filings.