The top judge in Oregon’s Court of Appeals on Wednesday warned of “rapidly escalating” legal filings that likely contain fake information created by artificial intelligence, directing court staff and judges to review the amount of court resources that have gone into addressing the issue.
Erin C. Lagesen, chief judge of the Oregon Court of Appeals, wrote ina public messagethat the court filings are coming from “lawyers and selfrepresented litigants alike.” She said such entries appear to be creating an increasing drain on court resources, pointing to guidance on the court’s website discussing the risks of using generative artificial intelligence to prepare legal briefs and the sanctions that could come from submitting false or fake legal information to the court.
“In addition, to get a concrete sense of how much time the submission of fabricated authority likely produced by generative artificial intelligence is syphoning from the Court of Appeals’ core work of deciding cases, I have directed our staff and judges to track the time spent addressing fabricated authority so that Oregonians can have an accounting of the resources consumed in the event the situation does not resolve promptly,” Lagesen said.
The rare public rebuke from Lagesen comes after high-profile cases of erroneous or sanctioned artificial intelligence use in Oregon legal filings. The Oregon Court of Appeals issued a $10,000 fine in March to an attorney ina case over arevoked marijuana production license where the court found at least 15 fabricated case citations.
In another case last week, an attorneyreceivedabout an $8,000 fine after filing a brief that contained “fabricated quotations and propositions of law falsely attributed to existing cases.” In federal court, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarkeissued a$110,000 penalty to two attorneys who filed briefs with citations to non-existent cases and fabricated quotations.
The Oregon appeals courts’guidanceon sanctions describes what kind of false or fake information has been submitted to the court. This includes citations of cases that do not exist, quotations that do not appear in the case cited or “factual support that is made up and has no basis in the record.”
Using such fabricated evidence is grounds for striking the legal filing from the record and imposing sanctions such as monetary payments to the court, attorneys fees to the opposing party and dismissal of an appeal case. To avoid any penalties, a person using the technology must verify cases cited and quotations as well as check if paraphrases are “objectively reasonable in light of what the case actually says.”
The Oregon State Bar, meanwhile,released guidance last yearon the use of AI by attorneys in Oregon, noting that lawyers may use the technology if they have taken “reasonable steps to become competent in the use of such technology.”
“Competence is an ongoing obligation,” the guidance reads. “At this point, AI includes thousands of rapidly evolving tools, and the associated benefits and risks of using AI are constantly changing.”
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