AI Hallucinations in Legal Research Are a Serious Problem … for Now

We’ve all seen headlines about lawyers submitting briefs to the court only to find out that their writings have references, quotes and citations that were completely fabricated. This is the current state of using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT, Claude and others to completely write legal briefs and conduct your legal research. It would be one thing if this were the result of inexperienced lawyers trying to find shortcuts to lessen a heavy workload, but instead we are seeing this from very experienced lawyers who should know better.

By now, we know that GenAI hallucinates. These tools, which ingest trillions of words from the Internet, are designed to be interactive, confident and helpful. So confident and helpful that it will go out of its way to make sure you are happy with the answers it provides you. Sometimes to meet this goal, it has to make stuff up. This is the hallucination problem. It is very real. It is very serious. And it is most likely very temporary.