A pair of Orange County immigration attorneys received temporary suspensions after the court discovered they used generative AI to write briefs that included \u201cmultiple nonexistent cases, misattributed quotations, and gross misrepresentations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attorneys Mike Singh Sethi and William Rounds, both part of Sethi Law Group in Orange County, were fined $2,500 each and suspended from practicing in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for six months, according to an opinion from the court issued Wednesday<\/a>. A request for comment from the firm was not immediately answered. <\/p>\n The ruling was clear that the discipline wasn\u2019t issued simply for the use of AI, but \u201cdue to their filing of briefs containing multiple nonexistent cases, misattributed quotations, and gross misrepresentations of real cases, and due to their lack of candor in revealing that these fabrications and inaccuracies were the result of hallucinations by generative AI.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHowever legal papers are prepared, and however legal technology develops, the court\u2019s procedural and ethical rules apply with equal force,\u201d the three-judge panel wrote. \u201cThe attorneys knowingly or recklessly made false statements to this Court.\u201d<\/p>\n The ruling also said that Sethi and Rounds \u201crepeatedly denied the possibility that generative artificial intelligence (\u201cAI\u201d) might have produced the errors\u201d and claimed that the errors were the \u201cproduct of innocent typographical mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n