AI incident ·
Westlaw CoCounsel Reportedly Generated False Legal Quotations in United States v. Farris
On this page 6 sections
In brief
An AI system built by Thomson Reuters, Large Language Model Developers and 1 other and deployed by Steven N. Howe, Legal Professionals and 1 other allegedly harmed United States Court Of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit, Legal Clients and 3 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 1 report
What happened
In United States v. Farris, court-appointed attorney Steven N. Howe admitted using Westlaw CoCounsel to draft appellate briefs that reportedly included AI-generated false quotations and misleading descriptions of precedent. The filing disrupted Farris's appeal, leading the court to appoint new counsel and restart briefing, while Howe lost his compensation and faced possible disciplinary action.
Laws on record for this risk area
No instrument on record yet covers this risk area where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (1)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Steven N. Howe, Legal Professionals, Law Firms
- Alleged harmed party
- United States Court Of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit, Legal Clients, Judicial Integrity, John C. Farris, Epistemic Integrity
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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- Intent
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- Timing
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- Harm level
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Source record: incident #1572 on the AI Incident Database · all 1 report