I recently wrote about a lawyer receiving a fine for referring to made up cases at court; he used genAI to search for precedents, the AI hallucinated results, the lawyer did not validate them, and the judge got pissed off.

I just learned this was far from a one-off case. There is a whole database of made up (hallucinated) legal cases submitted to court, along with sanctions/fines the courts issued (as judges don't like to deal with hallucinations).
https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/

There is also a (paid) engine for validating such references. Therefore, the world of genAI hallucinated precedents has become big enough to provide a business case. 💵😀
https://pelaikan-app.web.app/

I am not a lawyer who would use these, I am just astonished by how deep this field has become.

I have also learned that there is always a relevant XKCD comic; in our case it is this one:

Our world is ruled / governed by lawyers; decisions they make shall eventually cascade into decisions in all other areas.

In common law, decisions in previous court cases also guide future court decisions; submitting fake cases means tampering with rules of the system.

I am glad judges take this seriously, it means it will eventually be taken seriously in other areas too. In find areas overlapping between law and tech really exciting.

This post was first published on Linkedin here on 2026-01-30.