High court tells UK lawyers to stop misuse of AI after fake case-law citations
The high court has told senior lawyers to take urgent action to prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence after dozens of fake case-law citations were put before the courts that were either completely fictitious or contained made-up passages.Lawyers are increasingly using AI systems to help them build legal arguments, but two cases this year were blighted by made-up case-law citations that were either definitely or suspected to have been generated by AI.In a £89m damages case against the Qatar National Bank, the claimants made 45 case-law citations, 18 of which turned out to be fictitious, with quotes in many of the others also bogus.The claimant admitted using publicly available AI tools and his solicitor accepted he cited the sham authorities.When Haringey Law Centre challenged the London borough of Haringey over its alleged failure to provide its client with temporary accommodation, its lawyer cited phantom case law five times.
Suspicions were raised when the solicitor defending the council had to repeatedly query why they could not find any trace of the supposed authorities.It resulted in a legal action for wasted legal costs and a court found the law centre and its lawyer, a pupil barrister, were negligent.The barrister denied using AI in that case but said she may have inadvertently done so while using Google or Safari in preparation for a separate case where she also cited phantom authorities.In that case she said she may have taken account of AI summaries without realising what they were.In a regulatory ruling responding to the cases on Friday, Dame Victoria Sharp, the president of the King’s bench division, said there were “serious implications for the administration of justice and public confidence in the justice system if artificial intelligence is misused” and that lawyers misusing AI could face sanctions, from public admonishment to facing contempt of court proceedings and referral to the police.
She called on the Bar Council and the Law Society to consider steps to curb the problem “as a matter of urgency” and told heads of barristers’ chambers and managing partners of solicitors to ensure all lawyers know their professional and ethical duties if using AI,“Such tools can produce apparently coherent and plausible responses to prompts, but those coherent and plausible responses may turn out to be entirely incorrect,” she wrote,“The responses may make confident assertions that are simply untrue,They may cite sources that do not exist,They may purport to quote passages from a genuine source that do not appear in that source.
”Ian Jeffery, the chief executive of the Law Society of England and Wales, said the ruling “lays bare the dangers of using AI in legal work”.“Artificial intelligence tools are increasingly used to support legal service delivery,” he added.“However, the real risk of incorrect outputs produced by generative AI requires lawyers to check, review and ensure the accuracy of their work.”Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionThe cases are not the first to have been blighted by AI-created hallucinations.In a UK tax tribunal in 2023, an appellant who claimed to have been helped by “a friend in a solicitor’s office” provided nine bogus historical tribunal decisions as supposed precedents.
She admitted it was “possible” she had used ChatGPT, but said it surely made no difference as there must be other cases that made her point.The appellants in a €5.8m (£4.9m) Danish case this year narrowly avoided contempt proceedings when they relied on a made-up ruling that the judge spotted.And a 2023 case in the US district court for the southern district of New York descended into chaos when a lawyer was challenged to produce the seven apparently fictitious cases they had cited.
They simply asked ChatGPT to summarise the cases it had already made up and the result, said the judge, was “gibberish”; the two lawyers and their firm were fined $5,000,,
It’s high time Britain had another conversation about cannabis | Letters
The findings of the London Drugs Commission are welcome after a decade or more of static drug policy in the UK (Worried about weed: should London follow New York and decriminalise cannabis?, 31 May). While the report focuses on London, the suggestions resonate across the UK and beyond.Cannabis was reclassified from class B to class C in 2004, reducing the penalties for possession, after the home secretary (David Blunkett) took the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Unfortunately, the Labour government asked the council to reconsider its advice based on protests about the risks of cannabis to health. The council, headed by Sir Michael Rawlins, confirmed its advice that the drug should stay in class C
A novel idea for men’s emotional growth | Letter
Sarah Moss’s contribution to your debate (‘Men need liberation too’: do we need more male novelists?, 31 May) strikes at the heart of the matter: the issue is not whether men are being published, but whether they are reading – and being supported to develop emotional lives that fiction can help foster.As a researcher on men’s health behaviours, I see growing evidence that restrictive models of masculinity – stoicism, self-reliance, emotional detachment – are linked to poorer mental and physical health outcomes. Literature offers an antidote: access to emotional nuance, empathy and self-reflection. But boys are rarely encouraged to see reading in this way.As a teenager, I rarely discussed books with male friends, even though I secretly read them
Jamie Oliver attacks Essex council for not recognising dyslexia as special need
The celebrity chef and campaigner Jamie Oliver has said he is “disgusted” by his native county of Essex for not formally recognising dyslexia as a special educational need.Discussing his new documentary on dyslexia, Oliver claimed Essex county council did not want “to spend the money” on young people diagnosed with dyslexia, a neurological learning difficulty affecting reading and writing.“I’m disgusted by my county of Essex,” Oliver told a panel including the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, on Thursday. “I come from Essex. I was born and bred in Essex and [went to school] in Essex … and they’ve decided to not recognise dyslexia
Key takeaways from world’s largest cancer conference in Chicago
Doctors, scientists and researchers shared new findings on ways to tackle cancer at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, the world’s largest cancer conference.The event in Chicago, attended by about 44,000 health professionals, featured more than 200 sessions on this year’s theme, Driving Knowledge to Action: Building a Better Future. Here is a roundup of the key studies.An immunotherapy drug could help some cancer patients live years longer without the disease getting worse or coming back, a trial found.Pembrolizumab, sold under the brand name Keytruda, kept head and neck cancers at bay for five years, compared with 30 months with standard care
Free school meals extended but winter fuel changes could tax dead pensioners’ families
Bereaved families of tens of thousands of dead pensioners could be pursued by tax officials to recoup winter fuel payments under a new system being explored by the Treasury, the Guardian has learned.In a further attempt to win public support and quell Labour backbench concerns, ministers are announcing on Thursday that all pupils in England whose families claim universal credit will be eligible for free school meals under an expansion of the scheme.Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, confirmed on Wednesday that more pensioners will get winter fuel payments reinstated this year after weeks of uncertainty over the government’s decision to make a U-turn on scrapping the benefit.Ministers are looking at restoring the payments as a universal benefit and then recouping the money when high-income pensioners fill in their tax returns, as creating a new means test would be a highly complex option.However, government insiders are concerned about a time lag of at least six months between the payment of up to £300 being made and it then being clawed back
EHRC commissioner calls for ‘period of correction’ on trans rights after legal ruling
Transgender people must acknowledge a “period of correction” of rights after the supreme court decision on gender because they “have been lied to over many years” about what their rights actually were, one of the commissioners drawing up the official post-ruling guidance has said.Speaking at a debate about the repercussions of April’s ruling that “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to a biological woman, Akua Reindorf said trans people had been misled about their rights and there “has to be a period of correction, because other people have rights”.Reindorf, a barrister who is one of eight commissioners at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), who was speaking in a personal capacity, said she believes the fault lay with trans lobbyists.However, the human rights campaign groups Liberty and Amnesty called on the EHRC to make sure the rights of trans people were properly considered when it draws up guidance for public bodies on how to implement the changed legal landscape.A director of the trans campaign group TransActual said Reindorf’s remarks were profoundly unhelpful
Inspired Perese try edges Leicester past Sale and into Premiership final
Lambourn storms to Derby triumph with 11th victory for Aidan O’Brien
Coco Gauff beats Aryna Sabalenka to win French Open women’s singles final – as it happened
Coco Gauff claims first French Open title after fightback floors Aryna Sabalenka
Hull KR end 45-year wait for Challenge Cup glory as late try denies Warrington
Simone Biles slams ‘sore loser’ Riley Gaines over attacks on trans athlete