Canadian lawyer ‘misled court on AI use’
Canada’s Law Society Tribunal has suspended a lawyer for six months for presenting case law that was prepared with the help of ChatGPT to a court.
The three-member body also found that Mary Hyun-Soon Lee had then misled the court and the Law Society of Ontario when asked about her preparation of the document.
She was ordered to pay legal costs of CA$10,000.
The sole practitioner had been representing a client in family-law proceedings, during which she brought an urgent motion before the court for various relief.
Three non-existent cases
Of the four cases cited in the document, three did not exist, while the other contradicted the argument that Lee was trying to make.
Asked by the judge in the case if she had used ChatGPT to write the statement, she said that she did not.
In a subsequent letter, she told the judge that her staff had used generative AI for preliminary legal research and that she had failed to independently verify the citations before filing the document.
Admission
In a later case conference on potential contempt-of-court proceedings, Lee told the judge that a law student had prepared the document using ChatGPT, adding she had been “shocked” to be told of this.
During an investigation by the Law Society of Ontario, however, the lawyer admitted that she had prepared the document herself and had not employed any associate or law student at the time of the case.
She also explained that she did not understand how AI worked and did not even know about hallucinations until questioned by the judge. She was, therefore, taken aback, embarrassed, and did not know how to respond appropriately.
‘Repeated instances of dishonesty’
In considering whether the penalty should be more severe, the tribunal described the “repeated instances of dishonesty” as “extremely serious integrity lapses”.
It added, however, that the suspension would have serious consequences for Lee, who was nearing the end of her career, and accepted the genuineness of her remorse.
The body also noted that the lawyer had faced and continued to face other adverse consequences – including contempt-of-court proceedings.