Facts
Two cases were heard together under the court's Hamid jurisdiction, its inherent power to regulate its own procedures and enforce lawyers' duties to the court. In Ayinde, the grounds in a judicial review claim against the London Borough of Haringey cited five fake cases, including a supposed Court of Appeal decision; they had been drafted by a very junior barrister. In Al-Haroun, a claim against Qatar National Bank QPSC and QNB Capital LLC, 45 authorities were cited in correspondence with the court and in witness statements. Eighteen did not exist, and many of the others did not contain the quoted passages or support the propositions for which they were cited.
Question
The court considered how it should respond when false citations, known or suspected to have been produced by AI tools, are put before it. The main questions were the scope of lawyers' duty to verify AI-assisted research, the responsibility of lawyers who rely on others' work, the threshold for initiating contempt of court proceedings, and the available responses, including referral to a regulator, costs orders and referral to the police. The court also considered whether guidance published by the professional bodies was sufficient to address the problem.
Decision
The court (Dame Victoria Sharp P and Johnson J) held that freely available generative AI tools such as ChatGPT cannot conduct reliable legal research. Lawyers who use them must check the results against authoritative sources, and the duty applies equally to lawyers relying on others' work. In Ayinde, the threshold for contempt was met as regards the barrister, but the court declined to initiate proceedings because of the particular circumstances, stressing that this was not a precedent; it referred her to the Bar Standards Board and the solicitor to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. In Al-Haroun, the solicitor had not acted deliberately and the contempt threshold was not met, but he was referred to the SRA.
Why it matters
The judgment gives guidance on how the courts of England and Wales will respond to fictitious AI-generated citations. It makes clear that lawyers who rely on the work of others are also under the duty to verify, and that a lawyer cannot rely on the client to do so. The court also called for practical measures by heads of chambers, managing partners and regulators, and said that future Hamid hearings will ask whether those leadership responsibilities have been met. Copies were sent to the Bar Council, the Law Society and the Council of the Inns of Court.