Schwartz and LoDuca “abandoned their responsibilities” as lawyers by submitting the fake case citations, Castel said in the sanctions order. “The bigger disciplinary risk relates to the lawyer’s conduct after his initial memo of law was challenged, when the lawyer failed to go back and check the cases, and instead reaffirmed their legitimacy.” “A litigator would have to be living under a rock not to have gotten the message already about the risks of blithely relying on ChatGPT,” said Fordham Law professor Bruce Green. The embarrassment from the widespread news coverage of the case, coupled with the fines, should be enough to deter the lawyers from again falling prey to ChatGPT’s hallucinations, according to legal ethics experts. Kevin Castel found that at least one of the lawyers made knowingly false statements to the court and that the pair “doubled down” on the fake cases in the face of questions about the brief’s accuracy. The pair could face discipline from New York’s state bar association stemming from the use of ChatGPT, ethics experts said. “They’re lucky, but I think it’s enough of a sanction considering they’ve been the poster children for incompetent use of artificial intelligence in the practice of law,” said Jan Jacobowitz, a Miami-based legal ethics attorney. The lawyers will also be required to send the 34-page sanctions opinion to the real-life judges that ChatGPT said handed down the fake opinions. Steven Schwartz and Peter LoDuca were fined by a federal judge on Thursday for submitting a brief containing bogus quotes from nonexistent cases. Two Manhattan lawyers fined $5,000 for filing a ChatGPT-generated court brief could still face additional discipline, but the public attention they’re getting may be the worst of the punishment.
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