May 30 (Reuters) – A lawyer in New York faces possible sanctions over an error-ridden dossier he drafted with the help of ChatGPT.
This is the scenario legal ethics experts have been warning about since ChatGPT’s debut in November, and it heralds a new era of AI that can generate human-like responses based on vast amounts of data.
Levidow, Levidow & Oberman’s Steven Schwartz was sent to U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel on June 8 after admitting to using ChatGPT for briefs in a customer personal injury lawsuit against Avianca Airlines. will face a sanctions hearing by The brief cites six nonexistent court decisions.
In a court filing, Mr. Schwartz said he “deeply regrets” relying on the technology and “was not aware of the possible falsehoods of its content.”
Lawyers representing Avianca Airlines warned the court that the case Schwartz cited did not exist, but did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The American Bar Association’s Code of Professional Conduct does not explicitly mention artificial intelligence. But some existing ethical codes apply, experts say.
“You are ultimately responsible for the representations you make,” says Daniel Martin Katz, a professor at Chicago-Kent Law School who teaches professional responsibility and studies artificial intelligence in law. “That’s your bar card.”
ex officio duty
The rule requires lawyers to provide competent representation and keep up to date with the latest technology. They need to ensure that the technology they use provides accurate information. This is a major concern given that tools such as ChatGPT have been found to fabricate information. Also, lawyers should not rely too heavily on tools to avoid making mistakes.
“Blindly relying on AI to generate the texts you use to serve your clients cannot pass the convocation,” says Andrew, Suffolk University Law Dean, leader in legal technology and ethics. Mr Perlman said.
Perlman envisages a competence mandated rule that will ultimately require some degree of proficiency in artificial intelligence technology. AI could revolutionize legal practice, he said, and one day not using AI could be the same as not using computers in research.
confidentiality
The rule requires attorneys to “make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information on behalf of clients.” A lawyer using programs such as ChatGPT and Bing Chat risks giving her client’s data to her AI firm for model training and improvement, potentially violating confidentiality rules.
This is one reason why some law firms have explicitly instructed their attorneys not to use ChatGPT or similar programs for client matters, says Holland & Knight partner and internal artificial intelligence at the firm. Josias Dewey, who is working on the program, said.
Some law-focused artificial intelligence programs, such as CaseText’s CoCounsel and Harvey, address confidentiality issues by blocking data from external AI providers.
Liability for Non-Lawyer Assistance
Under this rule, attorneys must oversee the conduct of attorneys and non-attorneys assisting attorneys to ensure that they comply with the Code of Professional Conduct. The ABA clarified in 2012 that the rule also applies to non-human aid.
In other words, lawyers need to oversee the work of AI programs and understand enough to ensure that the technology meets the ethical standards to which lawyers must adhere.
“We must make reasonable efforts to ensure that the technology we use is consistent with our ethical responsibility to our clients,” Perlman said.
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Reported by Karen Sloan
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