Woe betide lawyers who appear before Judge Arran Gerrard of the Federal Circuitous Court.
HH is making it abundantly clear that lawyers who use “hallucinated” case references in their submissions will be packed off to the Stipes for reeducation.
This month, in Pasuengos v The Minister for Rejections, he was once again applying the birch.
In the original written submissions, the applicant’s lawyers cited three cases which do not exist and are therefore unable to stand as authority for the propositions they are supposed to support.
Notwithstanding a significant amount of grovelling, HH decided it was nonetheless appropriate to refer the solicitors to the Bureau de Spank.
Sportingly, he has declined to name and shame them because there had been a generous helping of candour.
He has been on this path for some time. In JNE24 v The Minister, a judicial review case from August last year, he sent the applicant’s lawyer to the Bureau after it was discovered that four case citations could not be identified and did not relate to the relevant principle that was being relied on.
The fictitious cases found their way into the justice system courtesy of AI. The lawyer said it was all a terrible mistake but HH was not satisfied and ordered that an affidavit be produced “addressing how the submissions filed were generated, including a full explanations to why the submissions contained references to non-existent authorities”.
HH was also unhappy that a notice of discontinuance was filed by the applicant a fortnight before the final hearing.
It appeared that for research the applicant’s lawyer had relied on Claude AI “to identify potentially relevant legal authorities and improve my legal arguments and position”.
To validate the submissions he used Microsoft Copilot.
Gerrard complained that these “hallucinations” are appearing far too frequently – wasting everyone’s time and constituting a breach of a practitioner’s duty to the court.
He was concerned in JNE24 that the lawyer’s explanation was “simplistic” and that he did not “fully comprehend what was required of him”.
It is expected that lawyers will review and check that real cases actually stand for the authority relied on.
“Legal principles are simply not slogans which can be affixed to submissions without content or analysis.”
Again, because of the poor wretch’s “candour, embarrassment and apology”, he was spared a public outing.