SA solicitor accused of using AI to generate Family Court documents in ‘vitriolic, obscene’ $500,000 custody dispute
A second Adelaide lawyer is facing accusations they cited fake AI cases – this time in an “extraordinarily vitriolic” Family Court case costing an “eye-watering” amount.
A second Adelaide lawyer is facing accusations they cited three cases, none of which ever actually happened, in court because of AI – this time in an “extraordinarily vitriolic” and “eye-wateringly” costly custody dispute.
The Advertiser has learned a solicitor appearing before the Family Court has been accused of submitting paperwork authored through the use of a generative AI program.
It is alleged that paperwork cites past cases supportive of their client’s position – each of which had been “hallucinated” by the AI, and none of which ever actually happened.
The accusations come as legal costs in the case – which has had 24 hearings, 19 court orders, and 83 documents filed in the past 12 months alone – pass the $500,000 mark.
It also comes less than a month after the SA Employment Tribunal referred another lawyer for disciplinary action over near-identical accusations.
In that case, Justice Steven Dolphin – who caught the lawyer in the alleged act – said such behaviour was intolerable in the legal profession and would be called out.
By law, the parties involved in the Family Court matter cannot be named nor identified, and the lawyers in the matter have also been assigned pseudonyms.
In judgments published online, the court describes the dispute between the former spouses as “extraordinarily vitriolic litigation, even by the standards of comparable cases”.
“In general terms, in less than 12 months, the case has involved 24 discrete court events, 19 court orders and the filing of 83 documents,” a judge says in one of the judgments.
“However the real burden of these proceedings – for the court but, more importantly, for the parties themselves – is reflected in the costs each has incurred in bringing the court to this point, which is clearly very far from resolution.
“In (one ex-spouse’s) case the costs so far incurred amount to $326,455.85, in (the other’s) case the costs incurred so far amount to $191,945.
“This does not include work in progress, which is estimated to be a further $43,000.
“In my view, the costs incurred by each of the parties are eye-watering in their quantum and are likely to be viewed as such by any reasonable lay observer.
“The litigation in the current matter has hitherto been conducted in the most adversarial way possible … it has consumed an amount of money which I dare to opine a fair-minded, reasonably-informed member of the public might regard as obscene.
“I am not in a position to determine, in any definitive way, whether there is any clear protagonist in regard to who is driving this process.
“Rather, the parties each appear locked in a mutually destructive cycle of recrimination.”
Subsequent to those judgments being issued, the solicitor for one of the ex-spouses submitted an outline of argument to the court ahead of the next scheduled hearing.
Counsel for the other ex-spouse raised issue with the document, alleging it was either written or edited by a generative AI program.
The court is now considering referring the solicitor to Legal Practitioner Conduct Commissioner Anthony Keane for investigation.
