i’m fighting a dismissal of a case that one of our younger lawyers botched at the trial court . On appeal, the other side’s opposition brief contained multiple statements of fact that were just completely false. And by that I mean, not the normal spinning true facts to the point of breaking stuff that lawyers do, but just flat out false stuff.
On one point I was making they told the court I failed to cite any cases for my proposition. Actually, I had cited three cases - and a fourth case in our particular appellate jurisdiction commenting with favor on one of the three cases from another appellate court.
We are fighting about an affidavit being excluded, and their brief said that I had never explained which of the individual averments in the affidavit I thought were improperly excluded. WTF?? In reality, I pointed out several of them and discussed why I thought they were improperly excluded.
They also made a statement about basic hornbook law on comparative fault that was so incredibly stupid and wrong that no lawyer would’ve asserted that stupidity.
It then dawned on me that maybe some associate used AI to draft it - and that the partner who filed it had not reviewed it.
I pointed out in my reply brief how all of that was false, and suggested that it was an unintentional misrepresentation caused by the use of AI. Well, that will not make me friends with opposing council, but I don’t think I should have to respond to absolute bullshit falsehoods just because an associate is too lazy to write their own brief.
I have used the AI feature on Westlaw for legal research, and while it is helpful, it gets all kinds of things wrong and can’t really get the procedural posture of all the parties right all of the time. There is a warning to check your work because they cannot guarantee the AI response is correct. And yet there is always some dumb son of a bitch who will cut and paste it into their work and send it on. It looks like a real problem.