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Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

arstechnica.com

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Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#21

Post by mschuster91 »

rsynnott wrote: post #11

What is it with the American far-right and hiring the most _incompetent possible lawyers_? Like, between this and Giuliani...

It's not like there are many lawyers left who are willing to represent them. Either because they have behaved so utterly vile like Alex Jones, the case is so clear cut due to their own behavior that there is zero chance of achieving more than a token reduction in sentence (while risking the ire of the clueless fanbase for a "bad defense job") like in this case, or because they have a history of not paying their bills like Trump.

That leaves only those as lawyers who already have zero reputation left to lose, want to make a name for themselves in the far-right scene, who are members of the cult as well, and those who think they can milk an already dead/insolvent horse.

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#22

Post by halgir »

seanhunter wrote: post #17

What I find really strange about this is I use AI a lot as a “smart friend” to work through explanations of things I find difficult etc and I am currently preparing for some exams so I will often give the AI a document and ask for some supporting resources to take the subject further and it almost always produces something that is plausibly close to a real thing but wrong in specifics. As in when you ask for a refere…

I use it in much the same way as you, and it's been extremely beneficial. But I also would not dream of signing my name on something that has been independently produced by AI, it's just too often blatantly wrong on specifics.

I think people who do are simply not aware that AI is not deterministic the same way a calculator is. I would feel entirely safe signing my name on a mathematical result produced by a calculator (assuming I trusted my own input).

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#23

Post by Ruphin »

grues-dinner wrote: post #8
victorbjorklund wrote: post #3

I dont understand how a lawyer can use AI like this and not just spend the little time required to check that the citations actually exist.

I constantly see people reply to question with "I asked ChatGPT for you and this is what it says" without a hint of the shame they should feel. The willingness to just accept plausible-sounding AI spew uncritically and without further investigation seems to be baked into some people.

That sort of response seems not too different from the classic "let me google that for you". It seems to me that it is a way to express that the answer to the question can be "trivially" obtained yourself by doing research on your own. Alternatively it can be interpreted as "I don't know anything more than Google/ChatGPT does".

What annoys me more about this type of response is that I feel there's a less rude way to express the same.

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#24

Post by distances »

rokkamokka wrote: post #12
grues-dinner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I constantly see people reply to question with "I asked ChatGPT for you and this is what it says" without a hint of the shame they should feel. The willingness to just accept plausible-sounding AI spew uncritically and without further investigation seems to be baked into some people.

Shame? It's often constructive! Just treat it for what it is, imperfect information.

It's not constructive to copy-paste LLM slop to discussions. I've yet to see a context where that is welcome, and people should feel shame for doing that.

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#25

Post by blululu »

eviks wrote: post #10
victorbjorklund wrote: post #3

I dont understand how a lawyer can use AI like this and not just spend the little time required to check that the citations actually exist.

It's not "a little time"

The Judge spent the time to do exactly this. Judges are busy. Their time is valuable. The lawyer used AI to make the judge do work. The lawyer was too lazy to do the verification work that they expected the judge to perform. This speaks to a profound level of disrespect.

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#26

Post by gyomu »

seanhunter wrote: post #17

What I find really strange about this is I use AI a lot as a “smart friend” to work through explanations of things I find difficult etc and I am currently preparing for some exams so I will often give the AI a document and ask for some supporting resources to take the subject further and it almost always produces something that is plausibly close to a real thing but wrong in specifics. As in when you ask for a refere…

People are lazy. I’m enrolled in a language class in a foreign country right now - so presumably people taking that class want to actually get good at the language so they can actually live their life here - yet a significant portion of students just turn in ChatGPT essays.

And I don’t mean essays edited with chatGPT, but essays that are clearly verbatim output. When the teacher asks the students to read them out loud to the class, they will stumble upon words and grammar that are way obviously way beyond anything we’ve studied. The utter lack of self awareness is both funny but also really sad.

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#27

Post by cogman10 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #21
rsynnott wrote: post #11

What is it with the American far-right and hiring the most _incompetent possible lawyers_? Like, between this and Giuliani...

It's not like there are many lawyers left who are willing to represent them. Either because they have behaved so utterly vile like Alex Jones, the case is so clear cut due to their own behavior that there is zero chance of achieving more than a token reduction in sentence (while risking the ire of the clueless fanbase for a "bad defense job") like in this case, or because they have a history of not paying their bills…

These are often also simply hard clients.

Jones is a good example of this. He cycled through about 20 different lawyers during the sandyhook trials. The reason he was defaulted is because when he was required to produce something, he fire the lawyers (or they'd quit), hire new ones, and invariably in the depositions an answer to "did you bring this document the court mandated that you produce" the answer was "oh, sorry, I'm brand new to this case and didn't know anything about that".

Jones wasn't cooperating with his lawyers.

There are plenty of good lawyers that have no problem representing far right figures. The issue really comes down to those figures being willing to follow their lawyer's advice.

The really bad lawyers simply don't care if their clients ignore their advice.

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#28

Post by tiahura »

As an attorney, I’ve found that this isn’t the issue it was a year ago.

1. Use reasoning models and include in the prompt to check the cited cases and verify holdings. 2. Take the draft, run it through ChatGpt deep research , Gemini deep research and Claude , and tell it to verify holdings.

I still double check, for now, but this is catching every hallucination.

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#29

Post by CSMastermind »

rsynnott wrote: post #11

What is it with the American far-right and hiring the most _incompetent possible lawyers_? Like, between this and Giuliani...

Selection bias on your part. There's plenty of incompetence (and outright fraud) on the other side as well.

Rememebr Michael Avenatti?

Re: Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

#30

Post by 3036e4 »

whatever1 wrote: post #5
daymanstep wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could probably use AI to check that the citations exist

And if they don't the AI will make up some for you

Maybe someone can make a browser extension that does not take 404 for an answer but just silently makes up something plausible?
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