Two “Must Study” AI Opinions

There have been two recent opinions about generative AI that you should know about

1. The Southern District of New York recently held that a client’s queries of ChatGPT about a lawsuit WERE NOT PRIVILEGED. My law partner Chris Schwegmann has an excellent analysis of that ruling and its practical implications in this recent Texas Lawbook article. I highly recommend it, Chris is way ahead of the curve in thinking about “what next?” after this important ruling.
2. The Fifth Circuit has had it with the scourge of hallucinated citations (iillustrated, fittingly, by generative AI to the right), and recently sanctioned a lawyer $2,500 for filing a brief with 21 shady citations (and evasive followup when asked about them). The case is Fletcher v. Experian and here is my recent Texas Lawbook article about it, and some practical lessons that it teaches (namely: (a) “don’t eat soup with a fork,” using general-purpose AI products for the wrong purposes; (b) don’t ignore “red flags” about citations and quotes that are too good to be true; and (c) if you make a mistake, for goodness sakes just apologize and move on, rather than trying to stall an obviously upset judge or judges.)