Judicial Hallucinations: The Lawyer's Duty to Detect and Correct

Deploying AI in litigation offers remarkable speed and efficiency, but also introduces significant risk when misused. Artificial intelligence can generate drafts, summarize rulings, and produce citations, yet it remains notably vulnerable to hallucinations — such as inventing cases, misquoting precedent, or blending real and imagined facts. These errors frequently sound authoritative, making them especially difficult to detect in high-stakes legal work.

Every legal professional, judge or attorney, must understand that AI is a tool requiring vigilant supervision. This means training staff not only in crafting effective prompts, but also in verifying output, checking all citations and facts, and reviewing AI-generated work with the same scrutiny applied to human work. 

Moreover, it is not just the litigators whose filings can expose failures in proper AI utilization. While attorneys may feel compelled to notify courts of opposing counsel's misuse of AI, the duty extends equally to errors found in judicial orders and opinions. Attorneys must not hesitate to respectfully advise the court regarding factual inconsistencies or nonexistent case citations. Upholding the integrity of judicial precedent is incumbent on all officers of the court.