ChatGPT instead of research: court sanctions lawyer

A US lawyer who used fictitious sources and quotes from ChatGPT in a brief has been ordered by an appeals court in the US state to reimburse costs incurred as a result. The lawyer must pay the other side's legal fees, reimburse the costs incurred by his own client and pay 1,000 US dollars to a non-profit legal organization, the court ruled (Utah Court of Appeals, 2025 UT App 80 ).

According to the court's decision, the lawyer and his defense attorney had stated that the brief had been written by a legal assistant who was not licensed to practice law. The lawyer responsible had not reviewed the content himself. Among other things, the pleading contained a reference to an alleged case that did not exist in any legal database. The errors in the submitted documents came to the attention of the opposing party's defense, which informed the court.

While this case is the first of its kind in the state of Utah, according to the court, other courts have had multiple experiences with the use of AI. About two years ago, another attorney took ChatGPT's information at face value. Another man wanted to save himself a lawyer right away and let an AI avatar speak for him.

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