Sharp: Severe sanctions
The president of the King’s Bench Division today issued a stark warning to lawyers about the serious consequences they will face for misusing artificial intelligence (AI) before the courts.
Dame Victoria Sharp said: “There are serious implications for the administration of justice and public confidence in the justice system if artificial intelligence is misused.
“In those circumstances, practical and effective measures must now be taken by those within the legal profession with individual leadership responsibilities (such as heads of chambers and managing partners) and by those with the responsibility for regulating the provision of legal services.
“Those measures must ensure that every individual currently providing legal services within this jurisdiction (whenever and wherever they were qualified to do so) understands and complies with their professional and ethical obligations and their duties to the court if using artificial intelligence.
“For the future, in Hamid hearings such as these, the profession can expect the court to inquire whether those leadership responsibilities have been fulfilled.”
Sitting with Mr Justice Johnson, Sharp P conducted the Hamid hearing – the court’s inherent power to enforce duties that lawyers owe to it – in relation to two matters where fake cases were put before the court.
Last month, Mr Justice Ritchie said that, in citing five fake cases, the behaviour of Sarah Forey, then a pupil at 3 Bolt Court and the lawyers at Haringey Law Centre in London had been improper, unreasonable and negligent, and he also ordered them to pay wasted costs.
The other case involved a witness statement from the claimant in a £90m action that featured 45 fake citations or fake quotes from real cases.
Sharp P acknowledged that AI “is likely to have a continuing and important role in the conduct of litigation in the future”, but its use must take place “with an appropriate degree of oversight, and within a regulatory framework that ensures compliance with well-established professional and ethical standards if public confidence in the administration of justice is to be maintained”.
In the context of legal research, she said, the risks of using AI “are now well known” – freely available tools like ChatGPT “are not capable of conducting reliable legal research”.
She stressed the professional duty lawyers were under to check the accuracy of such research by reference to “authoritative sources” before using it.
The judge laid out the range of powers to ensure lawyers comply with their duties to the court, from public admonition all the way to referral to the police.
Sharp P warned the risks posed to the administration of justice through fake material “are such that, save in exceptional circumstances, admonishment alone is unlikely to be a sufficient response”.
In the Haringey case, Ms Forey – who said she received little supervision during her pupillage – maintained that she did not use AI.
She accepted that she acted negligently and unreasonably, but not improperly.
Ms Forey also admitted to a separate incident in April where she put false material before a court.
“Ms Forey says that on 22 April 2025 a senior member of her chambers advised her to delete her list of cases/research and instead to use a recognised legal search engine. She accepted that advice. It follows that she has not been able to put her list of cases before us, or explain for that matter where the list of cases and citations derived from.”
She conceded that she “may also have carried out searches on Google or Safari” and taken account of AI-generated summaries of the results without realising what they were.
Sharp P said Ms Forey showed “a worrying lack of insight”. She said: “We do not accept that a lack of access to textbooks or electronic subscription services within chambers, if that is the position, provides anything more than marginal mitigation.
“Ms Forey could have checked the cases she cited by searching the National Archives’ caselaw website or by going to the law library of her Inn of Court. We regret to say that she has not provided to the court a coherent explanation for what happened.”
She must either have deliberately included fake citations or did use AI, despite denying it in her witness statement.
Either way, the threshold for initiating contempt proceedings was met but the court decided not to for various reasons.
She has been criticised in a public judgment and been referred to the Bar Standards Board (BSB), and was “an extremely junior lawyer who was apparently operating outside her level of competence and in a difficult home and work context”.
But Sharp J cautioned that this decision was not a precedent. “Lawyers who do not comply with their professional obligations in this respect risk severe sanction.”
Though Ms Forey has now been referred to the BSB by Ritchie J and has also self-referred, the court would also do so, asking the regulator to look, among other things, at the potential failings on the part of her chambers.
Solicitor Victor Amadigwe is chief executive of Haringey Law Centre, with Sunnelah Hussain the paralegal working under his supervision on the matter.
He has now introduced a rule at the centre that all citations referred to by any counsel must be checked.
Sharp J said Ms Hussain was “not at fault in any way. She acted appropriately throughout”.
While there was “no basis” to suspect that Mr Amadigwe deliberately caused false material to be put before the court, he had been put on notice by a letter from the solicitor for the other side.
“The steps taken by Mr Amadigwe in response were inadequate. We refer the matter to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).”
In the other case, the client himself, Hamad Al-Haroun, took responsibility for the inclusion of the fake material, which he said he obtained using AI tools, legal search engines and online sources.
His solicitor, Abid Hussain, accepted that he was wrong to rely on Mr Al-Haroun’s work. He said he has removed himself “from all litigated matters” while he undertakes training.
Sharp J said it was “extraordinary that the lawyer was relying on the client for the accuracy of their legal research, rather than the other way around”.
“It is striking that one of the fake authorities that was cited to Dias J was a decision that was attributed to Dias J. If this had been a deliberate attempt to mislead the court, it was always going to fail.
“The threshold for the initiation of contempt proceedings is, accordingly, not met. Mr Hussain has referred himself to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We will also make a referral.”
Sharp P concluded that these cases showed that guidance issued to date by the BSB and SRA on its own was “insufficient” to address the misuse of AI.
“More needs to be done to ensure that the guidance is followed and lawyers comply with their duties to the court. A copy of this judgment will be sent to the Bar Council and the Law Society, and to the Council of the Inns of Court.
“We invite them to consider as a matter of urgency what further steps they should now take in the light of this judgment.”
Leave a Comment