(April 22): One of Wall Street’s prominent law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, wrote to a bankruptcy judge to apologise for a court motion that included inaccurate citations generated by artificial intelligence, according to a filing in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
In the April 18 apology, Andrew Dietderich, founder and co-head of Sullivan’s restructuring group, said the firm had been made aware of errors in an emergency motion filed in the bankruptcy of Prince Global Holdings.
“The inaccuracies and errors in the Motion include artificial intelligence (“AI”) “hallucinations,” according to the letter, which added that the firm had not followed its protocols in preparing the document.
“We sincerely regret the errors in the Motion and the burden they have imposed on the Court and the parties, and I apologise on behalf of our entire team,” Dietderich wrote in the letter. The firm said it is taking steps to ensure the accuracy of all submissions.
The law firm represents liquidators overseeing actions against Prince Group, a Cambodia-based conglomerate.
Messages left with Sullivan were not immediately returned.
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It is very rare for big law firms such as Sullivan & Cromwell to include AI-generated errors in a court filing, said Damien Charlotin, who oversees a database tracking court cases in which an AI hallucination has been verified by a judge or acknowledged by the lawyers involved. More often, the mistakes are made by solo practitioners in cases involving many parties, said Charlotin, who is also a senior research fellow at French business school HEC Paris.
The number of such cases has grown in recent years as AI use has spread, he said. His database shows more than 900 US cases, only a handful of which are in bankruptcy court.
The errors underscore growing concerns about how law firms are using AI and what safeguards they have in place. Judges have reprimanded lawyers in some cases. Last year, a bankruptcy judge publicly reprimanded a former Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani senior counsel for submitting filings with artificial-intelligence-generated fake citations, although the firm itself avoided court sanctions.
Uploaded by Magessan Varatharaja
