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We have all heard the stories about AI-hallucinated cases finding their way into skeleton arguments and written submissions, but until relatively recently spotting one in the wild was a rarer occurrence.
Mangled case citations have been a feature of legal research enquiries for as long as there have been cases to cite. The seasoned law librarian can untangle jumbled years and volume numbers, decode anagrammed abbreviations, spell-check mistyped or misheard party names and, more often than not, locate your desired case.
Hallucinated citations, on the other hand, present an entirely different challenge. At first glance they seem legitimate but, despite meticulous efforts to track them down, they remain frustratingly elusive.
Take, for example, a recent encounter we had with a dubious citation during the course of an enquiry. After exhausting all available tools to decode and locate the case, our suspicion grew: could this be a rogue hallucination? The deeper we dug, the clearer it became that no such case existed, at which stage we turned to the likely source, Generative AI.
For a law librarian, encountering a hallucinated citation is a real Scooby Do reveal moment, so we excitedly entered prompts into various Generative AI applications – both free and paid – asking them to summarise our hallucinated case. The results were intriguing:
These examples are given not to suggest that any particular Generative AI tool should be preferred. Rather, they highlight that interrogation is key.
While the library remains the perfect starting point for legal research, with up-to-date practitioner texts and dedicated legal databases, in reality not everyone will have immediate access to such a resource and will instead begin their journey with readily available (and often free) Generative AI applications. These tools are adept at producing convincing imitations of case references and summaries, presented to the querent with an unruffled confidence that can mislead.
Keep your research on the right track with these simple steps:
Sally McLaren is a law librarian at the Inner Temple Library, with 20+ years of experience. She is enthusiastic about improving access to legal information.
Lily Rowe is a law librarian at the Inner Temple Library. She is interested in making access to legal information more effective and exciting for all.
We have all heard the stories about AI-hallucinated cases finding their way into skeleton arguments and written submissions, but until relatively recently spotting one in the wild was a rarer occurrence.
Mangled case citations have been a feature of legal research enquiries for as long as there have been cases to cite. The seasoned law librarian can untangle jumbled years and volume numbers, decode anagrammed abbreviations, spell-check mistyped or misheard party names and, more often than not, locate your desired case.
Hallucinated citations, on the other hand, present an entirely different challenge. At first glance they seem legitimate but, despite meticulous efforts to track them down, they remain frustratingly elusive.
Take, for example, a recent encounter we had with a dubious citation during the course of an enquiry. After exhausting all available tools to decode and locate the case, our suspicion grew: could this be a rogue hallucination? The deeper we dug, the clearer it became that no such case existed, at which stage we turned to the likely source, Generative AI.
For a law librarian, encountering a hallucinated citation is a real Scooby Do reveal moment, so we excitedly entered prompts into various Generative AI applications – both free and paid – asking them to summarise our hallucinated case. The results were intriguing:
These examples are given not to suggest that any particular Generative AI tool should be preferred. Rather, they highlight that interrogation is key.
While the library remains the perfect starting point for legal research, with up-to-date practitioner texts and dedicated legal databases, in reality not everyone will have immediate access to such a resource and will instead begin their journey with readily available (and often free) Generative AI applications. These tools are adept at producing convincing imitations of case references and summaries, presented to the querent with an unruffled confidence that can mislead.
Keep your research on the right track with these simple steps:
Chair of the Bar reports back
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