A partner at the esteemed Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell has extended a formal apology to a federal bankruptcy judge following the discovery of multiple fabricated legal citations and errors in a court filing, attributed to artificial intelligence misuse.
According to Business Insider, a senior partner at Sullivan & Cromwell recently addressed a letter to Chief Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan. The letter admitted that a previous filing by the firm, made on behalf of the bankrupt company Prince Global Holdings, contained faulty citations and so-called AI “hallucinations.”
Andrew Dietderich, co-head of Global Finance & Restructuring at Sullivan & Cromwell, clarified the issue in his letter. He explained that “hallucinations” refer to instances where AI tools invent case citations, misquote sources, or create fictitious legal references. “We deeply regret that this has occurred,” Dietderich expressed.
The letter included a chart highlighting the specific errors within the motion. It pointed out incorrect case names and numbers, along with quotes that seemed entirely fabricated rather than sourced from legitimate legal precedents. Such inaccuracies represent a severe breach of the standards required for federal court submissions, where precise legal citations are critical to the judicial process.
The errors were discovered not within Sullivan & Cromwell, but by attorneys from Boies Schiller Flexner, the law firm representing the creditors in the bankruptcy case. Dietderich mentioned that he expressed gratitude to the opposing firm for uncovering the mistakes and extended his apologies for the oversight.
With a 140-year legacy, Sullivan & Cromwell employs over 1,000 lawyers and is regarded as one of Wall Street’s most prestigious law firms. Dietderich stated that the firm has robust policies regarding AI usage in legal work and safeguards to prevent such errors from reaching the courts. However, he acknowledged that these protocols were not adhered to in this instance, and the firm’s citation review processes failed to identify the fabricated content before it was submitted.
Sullivan & Cromwell, founded 140 years ago, employs more than 1,000 attorneys and ranks among the most prominent law firms on Wall Street. According to Dietderich, the firm maintains comprehensive policies governing the use of artificial intelligence in legal work and has established safeguards specifically designed to prevent exactly this type of error from reaching the courts. However, he acknowledged that these procedures were not followed in this instance, and the firm’s review process for citations also failed to catch the fabricated material before submission.
– News previously reported that the head of another law firm recently stung by AI hallucinations, Morgan & Morgan, called the threat of AI to the legal profession “Nauseatingly frightening” in a letter to his huge firm:
In an internal letter shared in a court filing, Morgan & Morgan’s chief transformation officer cautioned the firm’s more than 1,000 attorneys that citing fake AI-generated cases in court documents could lead to serious consequences, including potential termination. This warning comes after one of the firm’s lead attorneys, Rudwin Ayala, cited eight cases in a lawsuit against Walmart that were later discovered to have been generated by ChatGPT, an AI chatbot.
The incident has raised concerns about the growing use of AI tools in the legal profession and the potential risks associated with relying on these tools without proper verification. Walmart’s lawyers urged the court to consider sanctions against Morgan & Morgan, arguing that the cited cases “seemingly do not exist anywhere other than in the world of Artificial Intelligence.”
As law firms struggle with court filings filled with fake case citations and fictitious quotes, America as a whole is waking up to the fact that AI presents both great opportunity and great danger to our country and culture. – News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at Business Insider here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for – News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.
