Montgomery, Alabama law firm says attorney’s use of AI was ‘isolated event’
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Matthew Reeves of Butler Snow acknowledged in a court hearing last month he used artificial intelligence to generate citations in a brief that later turned out to be hallucinations.
This article was originally published by Alabama Reflector.
A Montgomery-based law firm with an attorney facing possible sanctions for filing a legal brief with fabricated citations generated by artificial intelligence said an internal investigation found no other falsified citations in recent filings.
Butler Snow LLP said in a federal court filing earlier this month that it reviewed more than 50 dockets from Alabama federal courts and the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, 40 of which contained “substantive citations for review,” and did not find any “hallucinations in the citations generated from using artificial intelligence.”
“The results of these investigations, coupled with the declarations of counsel, indicate that this was an isolated event,” Butler Snow stated in its filing. “The two instances subject to the Order to Show Cause appear to be the only instances of AI-generated hallucinations submitted by counsel of record to this or any other Alabama federal court. Butler Snow says this not to minimize what has taken place in this case, but to provide assurance to the Court.”
Matthew Reeves, a partner with the firm, said in court last month he had used artificial intelligence to obtain citations in documents filed on behalf of the Alabama Department of Corrections in a lawsuit from an inmate alleging the department failed to protect him from violence.
Attorneys for the inmate first flagged the citations. U.S. District Court Judge Anna M. Manasco, overseeing the case, described five of them as “hallucinations,” including at least two to cases that do not exist.
Representatives from Butler Snow told Manasco during the May hearing that the firm would review filings from other cases to investigate any other possible use of AI that led to fabricated citations in other documents.
Manasco agreed to the firm’s request at the hearing to allow Butler Snow to complete the internal investigation before she levies sanctions in the case.
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, based in Philadelphia, independently reviewed the filings. The firm also included declarations from the attorneys in the case that they have not used AI in this case or any other aside from Reeves.
“The firm has begun the process of implementing the revised policies and procedures previously described to the Court,” Butler Snow said in the filing. “In addition, Matthew B. Reeves is, in conjunction with Plaintiff’s counsel and law school professor Anil Mujumdar, engaging in efforts to educate law students regarding the risks and repercussions of the use of AI in legal practice to help deter such conduct by others.”
The case is a civil lawsuit filed by Frankie Johnson against the Alabama Department of Corrections after he was assaulted by 13 people and stabbed at least nine times at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer in December 2019.
Johnson alleges corrections staff failed to protect him which led to another assault in March 2020 when he was stabbed by another individual at Donaldson.
During the case, attorneys for the Alabama Department of Corrections filed a motion to depose Johnson the week of June 3, but his attorneys filed their own motion seeking to delay the deposition to better prepare their client for questioning.
Reeves then filed a response to that motion to challenge opposing counsel’s request, claiming that courts have required people to testify after they are given proper notice, which they argued happened in the case. The filing included two legal references that attorneys for Johnson said they could not verify. Reeves admitted to using AI to generate the citations to support his argument without verifying if they were accurate.
Manasco had not levied sanctions against the firm as of late Monday afternoon.