The reliance on AI in legal research comes under fire as a judge questions the validity of citations in a high-profile case.
Cape Town - The sharp eye of a judge landed a law firm in a difficult situation when it was discovered that of the nine cases cited in their application as case law, only two could be found, leaving the strong suspicion that they had used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to source their citations.
Judge Elsje-Marie Bezuidenhout, sitting in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, not only ordered the law firm to pay the legal costs of the application from their own pockets, but she also referred the matter to the Legal Practice Council for possible investigation into the matter.
The issue came to light as Pietermaritzburg law firm, Surendra Singh and Associates, represented KwaZulu-Natal politician Godfrey Mvundla in an appeal, using Ms S Pillay as counsel.
Mvundla was suspended as mayor of the Umvoti local municipality and last year successfully took the matter to court to challenge his suspension.
Judge Bezuidenhout had, meanwhile, discharged the interim interdict he had obtained and rescinded the order.
“During the course of writing this judgment, it came to my knowledge that the case reference or citation for Pieterse (one of the case citations) might be incorrect. I checked my notes and asked the chief stenographer to listen to the recording, but this was the exact reference provided by Ms Pillay.
“There is no such case reported in the South African Law Reports, nor in the All South African Law Reports, and no reference to such a case could be found on the website of the South African Legal Information Institute, referred to as SAFLII.”
It then came to light that the clerk, now referred to as a candidate legal practitioner, was the person who drafted the supplementary notice of appeal. Judge Bezuidenhout in the end found that neither the plaintiff’s attorney nor counsel attempted to mislead the court.
“It seems that the attorneys were simply overzealous and careless. In this age of instant gratification, this incident serves as a timely reminder to, at least, the lawyers involved in this matter that when it comes to legal research, the efficiency of modern technology still needs to be infused with a dose of good old-fashioned independent reading,” she said.
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