AI: Public admonishment not enough
A circuit judge has referred two solicitors to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for submitting hallucinated cases to the court.
His Honour Judge Grimshaw in Dudley said that “lawyers who cite fictitious cases must face serious consequences”.
He continued: “In the current environment, where this is a problem that is significant (and indeed seems to be growing), the guidance [of the High Court] in Ayinde indicates that judges should take a robust approach.
“The importance of setting and enforcing proper standards cannot be underestimated.”
Walsall firm AML Legal acted for the claimant on a small claims matter about the return of goods. The claimant lost and appealed.
The statement of case and grounds of appeal, skeleton argument and an authorities document all included several cases that, while genuine, either had the wrong citations or did not establish the point they claimed.
HHJ Grimshaw said they appeared to be “churned out by a system utilising artificial intelligence” and ordered AML director Kossar Qureshi and Mahmood Hussain, the consultant solicitor with conduct of the case, to provide witness statements and appear before him to explain what had happened. Ms Qureshi was later excused attendance on medical grounds.
Her evidence was that her name appeared at the end of the skeleton argument only because documents generated through the firm’s case management system routinely displayed it as the firm’s principal.
The judge said: “I struggle with that explanation, given that most of the documents filed do not in fact have Ms Qureshi’s name on them, nor is she identified as the principal of the firm on the original skeleton argument.”
She said she bore overall responsibility and accepted the seriousness of the matter. She said she had reviewed the firm’s internal procedures and ensured additional safeguards were now in place.
Mr Hussain “accepted that he made an omission in carrying out his duties and had not intentionally misled the court”.
He was the sole supervising solicitor and said the documents were prepared with the assistance of a paralegal. “He accepts that he should have checked the legal research of the paralegal before the documents were submitted and takes full responsibility.”
“I accept the explanations that he has provided to me to be genuine and I also accept that he is genuinely remorseful,” HHJ Grimshaw said.
He asked the judge not to refer him to the SRA “as, to put it simply, everyone has learned from these events”.
But the judge rejected this. “The reality is, however, and as Mr Hussain accepts, misleading material was placed before the court in terms of mis-cited legal authorities, said to support propositions that they simply did not, when even the most simple of checks would have shown that not to be the case, or shown it to be the case, i.e. that they were incorrect.
“That is inexcusable on the part of a professionally qualified lawyer. The fact that one document was endorsed with a statement of truth signed by that same solicitor makes that criticism all the more valid, in my judgment.”
Considering the guide in Ayinde, he concluded that contempt proceedings and/or a referral to a ‘Hamid judge’ “would be disproportionate”, as the evidence did not support the possibility that false information was deliberately put before the court. “Mere negligence as to the falsity of the material is insufficient.”
He also took account of the fact that, when the problems with the citations were raised with AML Legal, the firm instructed counsel to draft an alternative skeleton “explicitly noting the previous citation problems” – although it did not do the same with the other documents.
But a public admonishment would not suffice. “Given the seriousness of what has happened, I am of the view that both solicitors ought to be referred to the Solicitors Regulation Authority so that their regulatory body can decide whether any further action should be taken against either solicitor personally, or in terms of AML Legal, given it appears to me that there may well have been a breach of the Solicitors Code of Conduct.
“In my judgment, there were failures here on the part of both solicitors and the management of the firm.”
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