THE CHEATING LAWYERS AND THEIR FIRMS: AI THE HALLUCINATOR
Many legal professionals, mostly lawyers have been caught cheating by using AI in writing their legal citations in courts. They pretend to have prepared or researched the citations themselves. This is remarkably close to academic cheating if it in the post graduate studies at the university. They cheat their clients and waste the time for the judges and magistrates. They steal consultations and legal service money from their unsuspecting clients.
The Columbia Journalism Review agree with the view that AI is not 100% perfect or correct. AI applications like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, and Gemini were examined on their reliability. The examinations indicated the same patterns of unreliability with their answers full of incorrect data and generating wrong data. Most of these AI applications, 60% of them were caught with the provisioning of wrong data and or producing wrong data. Only Perplexity AI performed the best, with 37% false information. What the best wrong is wrong.
The production of wrong data will be referred to AI hallucinations in this opinion piece. The hallucinations are very widespread in the legal fraternity all over the globe. Big and small firms are like were hit by the cheating and lazy lawyers.
The Butler Snow law firm from Mississippi was caught with their pants down when they were confronted by the Judge for using fake legal citations in their arguments retrieved from AI ChatGPT in two court decisions. One of the involved lawyers Mathew Reeves apologised profusely and indicated that it was “a lapse in diligence and judgment” (Jumpstart, 2025 & Reuters, 2023).
A Pietermaritzburg High Court had made scathing remarks on the lawyers cheating their clients using ChatGPT with fake legal citations or referrals. The lawyers concerned was hit with legal costs and the referral to the Legal Practice Council for further sanctioning (cdf.com, 2025).
Morgan and Morgan, the US Law firm has sent an instruction to its close to one thousand lawyers indicating that the use of fake AI or manufactured data or legal citations may get them fired (Reuters, 2025).
It has been indicated that close to 120 000 legal cases globally used fake AI hallucinations as genuine legal citations by lawyers in courts (mashable.com, 2025).
The UK High Court had ordered that the lawyers must cease the abuse of AI applications. It happened the lawyers had submitted case law citations which were deemed fake and or contained artificially create content, not real case law. These citations or fake legal arguments are used by lawyers at the courts as part of their legal strategies to win their arguments. The Qatar National Bank is being sued for forty-nine million pounds in the UK High Court and the litigating lawyers used forty-five case law citations and 18 of such cases were artificially generated through the AI. The citations also contained ghost quotations. The high court indicated that lawyers misusing AI will be sanctioned or face contempt of court and or be referred to the police for prosecution (thegurdian.com, 2025).
CONCLUSSIONS
AI hallucinations is a wake call that even lawyers cannot be trusted with protecting the sanctity and the integrity of the legal profession. The legal profession must introduce strict measures to detect the cheating lawyers. Academic thieves, in the academic world, that is who they are and not fit for purpose. AI hallucinations pose a threat to the legal professions’ ethics and obligations to the courts and clients. ChatGPT had in most cases been the provider of fake legal citations or non-existence court cases and the lawyers were caught cheating their clients. The integrity of the legal profession in under threat not because AI applications, it is because of untrustworthy, unscrupulous and thievery legal professionals. The love of quick bucks but hate the arduous work of researching real and genuine cases. These lawyers must be debarred from the legal profession and become AI experts in the Information and Technology industry. These are not legal professionals but broad day light thieves, they are legal Zama Zamas.
1 Comment
It’s great .
Dr most of students and 2% from Covid graduates were using ChatGPT on basis of trying to make their own understanding since they were not in contact classes and less understanding since materials were not conducive, hassles in trying to submit their own research without getting relevant information from google scholar and other resources.
Thank you