This is just a new example of an ongoing thing with legal research. A case that was “good caselaw” a year ago can be overturned or distinguished into oblivion by later cases. Lawyers are frequently chastised for failing to “Shepardize” their caselaw (meaning look into the cases their citing and make sure it’s relevant and still accurate).
We’ve just made it one step easier to forget to actually check your work.
The cases I’ve seen lawyers in trouble for citing don’t even exist, they weren’t overturned. The LLM is just stringing together case names that sound real. But good lawyers are using llms to get rid of the tedium of a lot of boilerplate writing (and claiming they can charge you less which they probably aren’t).
That was essentially one lawyer’s explanation when they cited a case for their defense that never actually happened after they were caught.
This is just a new example of an ongoing thing with legal research. A case that was “good caselaw” a year ago can be overturned or distinguished into oblivion by later cases. Lawyers are frequently chastised for failing to “Shepardize” their caselaw (meaning look into the cases their citing and make sure it’s relevant and still accurate).
We’ve just made it one step easier to forget to actually check your work.
The cases I’ve seen lawyers in trouble for citing don’t even exist, they weren’t overturned. The LLM is just stringing together case names that sound real. But good lawyers are using llms to get rid of the tedium of a lot of boilerplate writing (and claiming they can charge you less which they probably aren’t).