> Mostafavi told CalMatters he wrote the appeal and then used ChatGPT to try and improve it. He said that he didn’t know it would add case citations or make things up. He thinks it is unrealistic to expect lawyers to stop using AI. [...] “In the meantime we’re going to have some victims, we’re going to have some damages, we’re going to have some wreckages,” he said. “I hope this example will help others not fall into the hole. I’m paying the price.”

Wow. Seems like he really took the lesson to heart. We're so helpless in the face of LLM technology that "having some victims, having some damages" (rather than reading what you submit to the court) is the inevitable price of progress in the legal profession?

21 of 23 citations are fake, and so is whatever reasoning they purport to support, and that's casually "adding some citations"? I sometimes use tools that do things I don't expect, but usually I'd like to think I notice when I check their work... if there were 2 citations when I started, and 23 when I finished, I'd like to think I'd notice.

> He thinks it is unrealistic to expect lawyers to stop using AI.

I disagree. It worked until now, and using AI is clearly doing more harm than good, especially in situations where you hire an expert to help you.

Remember, a lawyer is someone who actually has passed a bar exam, and with that there is an understanding that whatever they sign, they validate as correct. The fact that they used AI here actually isn't the worst. The fact that they blindly signed it afterwards is a sign that they are unfit to be a lawyer.

We can make the argument that this might be pushed from upper management, but remember, the license is personal. So it's not that they can hide behind such a mandate.

It's the same discussions I'm having with colleagues about using AI to generate code, or to review code. At a certain moment there is pressure to go faster, and stuff gets committed without a human touching it.

Until that software ends up on your glucose pump, or the system used to radiate your brain tumor.

His response is absurd. This is no different than having a human associate draft a document for a partner and then the partner shrugging their shoulders when it's riddled with errors because they didn't bother to check it themselves. You're responsible for what goes out in your name as an attorney representing a client. That's literally your job. What AI can help with is precisely this first level of drafting, but that's why it's even more important to have a human supervising and checking the process.

> He thinks it is unrealistic to expect lawyers to stop using AI

Sure. Its also unrealistic to expect nobody to murder anyone. That's why we invented jail.

I came here to quote that exact part of the article.

My guess is that he probably doesn't believe that, but that he's smart enough to try to spin it that way.

Since his career should be taking at least a small hit right now, not only for getting caught using ChatGPT, but also for submitting blatant fabrications to the court.

The court and professional groups will be understanding, and want to help him and others improve, but some clients/employers will be less understanding.

> We're so helpless in the face of LLM technology that "having some victims, having some damages" (rather than reading what you submit to the court) is the inevitable price of progress in the legal profession?

Same with FSD at Tesla, there's many people who think that accidents and fatalities are "worth it" to get to the goal. And who cares if you, personally, disagree? They're comfortable that the risk to you of being hit by a Tesla that failed to react to you is an acceptable price of "the mission"/goal.

> 21 of 23 citations are fake

This was from the model available in June 2023

I've taken this hallucination issue to heart since the first time this headline occurred, but if you just started with leading LLM's just today, you wouldn't have this issue. I'd say it would be down to like 1 out of 23 at this point.

Definitely keep verifying especially because the models available to you keep changing if you use cloud services, but this September 2025 is not June 2023 anymore and the conversation needs to be much more nuanced.