EPIC FAIL

 No, the title of the post does not relate to the admittedly heartbreaking loss of the Miami Heat Saturday night. Although it pains us to say it, the Heat courageously battled back from multiple Celtic double-digit leads on Saturday night before a packed Biscayne Boulevard arena packed with white-shirt-wearing fans making their first showing at a Heat game this year, paying triple the price of a ticket, and pretending to be loyal fans.  

Props to J Butler who was ice with three seconds left, nailing three free throws to put your Miami Heat up by one. Alas, you have to box out under the boards, or the opposing team will scoop up a missed shot and tap it in for the win, which is just what happened. 

Game 7 is Monday. We might, just might be in Beantown with a ticket, wearing Green. 

The title of our post refers to the article making the rounds where a lawyer used ChatGBT to write a response to a motion. The bot, feeling a bit frisky, created fake case names and cites that the lawyer used in the motion. The other side, not being as lazy as the author of the brief, actually tried to pull the cases, and alerted the court they did not exist. One case centered around a fictitious 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, so the district judge went so far as to call the clerk of the 111th Ciruit to ask whether the case existed. It did not. 

The only defense the lawyer who wrote the bot brief had was that he apparently asked the bot if the cases he cited were real. And the bot replied that they were. Which brings us to this new maxim of law- "Never trust a bot with whom which you haven't shared your fee. "

What kind of lawyer cites cases that s/he doesn't bother to read? 

There's lots of articles on this mishap, here's one you can check out. 

 Southern District of New York Judge Kevin Castel said in an order. Lawyer Steven Schwartz claimed it was his first time using ChatGPT for a case, and he “was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.” Schwartz, who will face a sanctions hearing next month, said in an affidavit that he “greatly regrets having utilized generative artificial intelligence to supplement the legal research” and “will never do so in the future without absolute verification.” In his affidavit, he included screenshots of ChatGPT swearing the fake cases were real and even cited real legal databases the lawsuits were supposedly stored in.

Mr. Schwartz, who has practiced law in New York for three decades, told Judge P. Kevin Castel that he had no intent to deceive the court or the airline. Mr. Schwartz said that he had never used ChatGPT, and “therefore was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.”

He had, he told Judge Castel, even asked the program to verify that the cases were real.

It had said yes.

The NY Times covers it here. 

Rumpole notes that the bot had it's AI fingers crossed behind its back.