King's Counsel among lawyers referred to watchdog over alleged fake AI case citations in ‘vitriolic’ Family Court custody dispute
Three lawyers could lose their careers after AI-generated fake case citations were discovered in a $500,000 “vitriolic” Family Court custody battle.
Three lawyers, including a King’s Counsel, who cited three “non-existent, inaccurate and misleading” cases in an “extraordinarily vitriolic” custody dispute by using AI now face disciplinary action.
The Full Court of the Family Court has referred the unnamed trio – one from SA and two from Victoria – to the legal watchdogs of their respective states.
In a judgment published online, the court says the Victorian practitioners – one of whom is a KC – have apologised, accepted responsibility and promised their actions will not be repeated.
However, Justices Murray Aldridge, Catherine Carew and Juliet Behrens said the SA lawyer had taken a different approach to the allegations.
“She denied using AI herself, and said that it was her paralegal who had used AI … to alphabetise the cases,” they said.
“She said that ‘despite me not using AI myself, I accept full responsibility for the use of AI by my paralegal’ and had ‘terminated the services’ of her paralegal.”
Last month, The Advertiser revealed the SA lawyer had been accused of citing three cases, none of which ever actually happened, on behalf of her client in a custody matter.
The case has had 24 hearings, 19 court orders, and 83 documents filed in the past 12 months alone, with legal costs exceeding $500,000 so far.
A judge has described the dispute as “extraordinarily vitriolic”, and dubbed the expenses incurred “eye-watering”.
In October, the SA Employment Tribunal referred a separate lawyer for disciplinary action over his alleged use of AI to win a WorkCover claim with three imaginary citations.
In its judgment, the Family Court said the trio of lawyers filed a list of citations on October 17, then filed an amended list on November 3 with three cases removed.
“The letter that accompanied the amended (list) advised that there ‘were significant errors in the citations’ and apologised for the ‘oversight’,” the judges said.
“It was obvious that the amendments were made to rectify the inclusion in the original of non-existent, inaccurate and misleading authorities.”
They said the court’s registry caught the use of AI regardless and asked the trio to explain themselves.
The Victorian lawyers, they said, provided detailed explanations of the circumstances “including that they had not used AI themselves”.
The pair said they had “settled” a document written by the SA lawyer – who, in her letter to the court, blamed her paralegal.
“I had not used AI … I have never used AI to create a court document,” she wrote.
“My paralegal told me she used AI to alphabetise the cases in the list of authorities and place them under headings of each ground of appeal.”
The court said the documents contained other obvious errors, but no explanation had been offered as to why they had occurred nor what AI program had been used.
“There are well-documented risks to the administration of justice associated with the use of AI in the preparation of court documents,” the judges said.
“It is appropriate that this matter be referred to the relevant professional disciplinary bodies for consideration of the conduct in this matter of (the lawyers).”
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Originally published as King's Counsel among lawyers referred to watchdog over alleged fake AI case citations in ‘vitriolic’ Family Court custody dispute
