Lawyer Steven Schwartz recently found himself in a precarious situation. After relying on an AI chatbot to “supplement” the legwork for legal filings in the case Mata v. Avianca, Schwartz discovered that the chatbot had completely fabricated previous court decisions out of thin air. These nonexistent cases were cited in the defensing brief that was submitted to the court.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a popular language model that is designed to follow instructions and provide a user with a response for their prompt. In this case, when Schwartz asked the AI chatbot for information, it provided the names of similar cases that were completely made up.
Avianca’s legal team and the judge assigned to the case quickly figured out that the cases couldn’t be located in any legal database. Recognizing the predicament, Schwartz provided an affidavit to the court explaining how he used ChatGPT and was “unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.” The lawyer even submitted screenshots of his interactions with the chatbot that falsely confirmed the existence of these cases.
In response, the judge has called for a hearing where he will discuss potential sanctions to be issued to Schwartz for this “unprecedented circumstance.”
Levidow, Levidow & Oberman is a legal firm located in New York, formed by Stephen Schwartz and two other lawyers. They specialize mainly in commercial cases and real estate. At the time, the firm had nearly three decades of experience in law.
Schwartz, the lawyer in question, is from the same firm and has been practicing law for three decades as well. He is a very respected lawyer in the field and has been successful in all of his previous cases.
This incident, however, could easily derail his entire career, as he could now face sanctions for submitting fabricated cases to the court. It remains to be seen how this situation will play out for Schwartz and Levidow, Levidow & Oberman.
