In today’s episode, we examine the case against Michael Cohen, former Trump legal advisor, whose own counsel was exposed in a New York Times article on December 29, 2023, for using ChatGPT, non-existence legal citations in a court filing. The interesting twist to the story is that Cohen, himself, provided those citations to his counsel. I’ll let lawyer Joel MacMull explain the details, before technologist Shannon Lietz and I jump to add our thoughts on the case.
Background: Michael Cohen gave his then lawyer, some fictitious citations that he had identified from Google BARD, that of course were non existent, and of course we revisited this issue in the summer when, uh, and this is I think entirely coincidental, there was a plaintiff's lawyer by the name of Schwartz that got in trouble from Judge Castell in the Southern District of New York for serving up to the court essentially fictitious citations.