Toronto judge accuses lawyer of using AI and fake cases to make legal arguments

A Toronto judge who suspects a lawyer used artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT to create a legal document full of unreal cases and “hallucinations” has ordered the lawyer to explain why she should not be cited for “contempt in the face of the court.” The order for lawyer Jisuh Lee to appear for a “show cause hearing” where she could be cited for contempt follows a recent court hearing in which Lee was allegedly caught presenting cases that do not exist as precedents for her arguments. Lee appeared before Ontario Superior Court Judge Fred Myers to argue a motion from her own factum — dated April 25 and signed with the usual formality, “all of which is respectfully submitted” — that included links to non-existent cases, alleged misreadings of real cases, and what the judge suspected were “possibly artificial intelligence hallucinations.” Some of these alleged shortcomings of the factum came up in court, but the lawyer plugged on with her submissions, referring the judge via links to off-topic cases such as one about commercial real estate, another about a wrongful dismissal, and also to webpages that return a “404 Error – Page not found.” The awkward scene went down a few days ago in a Toronto courtroom where Lee was appearing on behalf of her client Hanna Ko to argue a motion in a complicated estate and family law matter involving a deceased man, two women with claims to be his spouse, and his two children. Lee cited various precedent cases to support her arguments, but when the judge asked to see a copy, she was unable to give him one from her papers, so the judge looked them up online himself, sometimes finding they did not seem to exist in any legal database, or were irrelevant, or did not show what Lee argued. Lee’s factum, for example, cited a case as a precedent for when a court removed an estate trustee. “In fact, the opposite is true. The court did not remove the estate trustees,” Judge Myers wrote, after reading it. Faced with this confusion, Myers asked Lee if her factum was prepared by artificial intelligence. She said her office “does not usually do so but that she would have to check with her clerk,” the judge wrote. The judge said he thought he had an idea of what was really going on, however, and wrote so in his reasons , noting that Lee has not offered any explanation in the few days since the hearing. “It appears that Ms. Lee’s factum may have been created by AI and that before filing the factum and relying on it in court, she might not have checked to make sure the cases were real or supported the propositions of law which she submitted to the court in writing and then again orally,” he wrote. He then listed the duties of a lawyer to the court, their clients, and the justice system, including faithful representation, not to fabricate case precedents, to use technology for research “competently,” to review material she signs, and not to mislead the court. “It should go without saying that it is the lawyer’s duty to read cases before submitting them to a court as precedential authorities. At its barest minimum, it is the lawyer’s duty not to submit case authorities that do not exist or that stand for the opposite of the lawyer’s submission,” the judge wrote. “Ms. Lee may have committed grave breaches of her duties that may amount to contempt in the face of the court,” he wrote. Myers noted that the alleged contempt does not involve his own actions or a personal insult to the court, so he decided he would handle the matter himself. He ordered Lee to appear for what is known as a show cause hearing, to have the opportunity to explain why he should not cite her for contempt. He noted she is entitled to the presumption of innocence. That hearing is scheduled for next week. “I am not open to discussing it,” Lee said when reached by National Post. “I’m not prepared to talk about it right now because it’s an open matter.” She declined to say whether she prepared the factum herself, whether she used AI, or whether she has submitted AI material in other cases. Lee is the managing partner at ML Lawyers, which has an office in midtown Toronto. Her name Jisuh Lee is listed by the Law Society of Ontario as an assumed name, and her listing is under the name Mary Hyun-Sook Lee. She has no history of regulatory action by the law society.

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