South Korean courts are seeing a rise in attorneys citing non-existent "ghost cases" and fabricated precedents created by AI tools in legal filings. Judges report spending significantly more time verifying citations due to AI-generated hallucinations, sometimes pointing out fake precedents directly in the main judgment text rather than footnotes. One judge said, "In written judgments, I used to point out non-existent cases cited by lawyers in footnotes. Now, there are so many that I point them out in brackets in the main text." Another added, "It is more time-consuming now, because I have to go through each cited case" [1, 2]. The South Korean judiciary is reviewing legislation that would impose fines on attorneys who submit false citations and require them to disclose AI use in their submissions [1, 2].
In the United States, courts have increasingly sanctioned lawyers for submitting AI-generated briefs containing fabricated quotes and false legal citations. Louisiana district judge Jerry Edwards Jr fined an attorney US$1,000 and mandated an AI-use training course after the lawyer submitted briefs with seven fabricated legal quotes. Judge Edwards noted, "Ignorance of the risks of AI usage is no longer an excuse" [3]. Another U.S. judge, Linda Kevins, said such errors "wasted the time and money of both the opposing party and the court. In addition, they were potentially harming the reputation of judges and courts whose names are falsely invoked as authors of the bogus opinions" [3].
Since April 2023, lawyer Damien Charlotin has compiled a crowd-sourced database documenting 1,600 court documents worldwide containing AI hallucinations, with 1,116 from the U.S. Charlotin warned, "The lawyer’s credibility is in tatters – but there are cases where lawyers still win, despite the hallucinations, because they were right on the merits" [3]. Legal experts say AI hallucinations do not always undermine cases but erode trust and waste judicial resources [3]. Advice columns advocate for systematic questioning of attorneys caught using AI hallucinations to improve accountability [4].
South Korea’s planned legal amendments and ongoing U.S. court sanctions mark a global effort to curb misuse of AI-generated false legal citations and hold attorneys accountable.
