AI: the judgment

Judges demand action to stop lawyers generating fake precedents

Heads of barristers’ chambers, managing partners of law firms and legal regulators must now take “practical and effective measures” to ensure that all providers of legal services who use artificial intelligence (AI) understand their professional obligations and their duties to the courts, two senior judges ruled in the High Court this morning.

Dealing with two separate cases in which it was suspected that AI-generated fake precedents had been cited in legal proceedings, Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench division, and Mr Justice Johnson concluded that the threshold for initiating contempt proceedings had been met in one of them. It involved a barrister who had either deliberately included fake citations in her written work or had untruthfully denied using generative AI tools to produce a list of cases and/or to draft her grounds of claim.

A white wig, as worn by a very new barrister

I explained the background to the two cases here on 19 May and subsequently published a report of the hearing, which took place in the High Court sitting as a divisional court on 23 May.