The majority of California’s 58 superior courts, together making up the country’s largest trial court system, have decided to greenlight the use of generative Artificial Intelligence in their work this year, according to a Law360 investigation referenced in the Legal Tech & Artificial Intelligence roundup. The development reflects a broader shift across the legal industry, where courts, law firms, legal startups and law schools are moving from experimentation to formal governance, procurement and training tied to Artificial Intelligence tools.
That institutional acceptance is unfolding alongside growing concern about reliability and professional responsibility. Judges are sanctioning attorneys over hallucinated or fabricated citations tied to Artificial Intelligence use. In Utah, two solo practitioners were sanctioned for filing a brief with two Artificial Intelligence-generated errors and were ordered to complete ethics training. In Louisiana, attorneys for the city of New Orleans were sanctioned over misuse of Artificial Intelligence that produced hallucinated case citations. An Oregon appellate court ordered an attorney to pay 10,000 for filing an opening brief containing fabricated citations and quotations that did not exist in Oregon case law. Another court dispute involved an AI-hallucinated citation allegedly introduced by a generative Artificial Intelligence tool used to harmonize brief drafts, then missed during citation review.
Legal professionals are also debating procedural safeguards meant to curb these problems. A new requirement to hyperlink case law has drawn support as a check against fake Artificial Intelligence-generated citations, though some lawyers question whether it will be sufficient and warn it could add burden. Even as sanctions escalate, attorneys quoted in the roundup suggest penalties alone may not eliminate the problem, indicating that governance, verification practices and user training will remain central as Artificial Intelligence tools spread through legal workflows.
At the same time, investment and hiring across legal technology continue to accelerate. PointOne raised 16 million in a Series A round to expand its legal billing platform and hire for key roles. Norway-based Newcode.ai raised 6.5 million in seed funding. Harvey hired a major law firm partner as chief strategy officer, HSF Kramer began recruiting for at least three new U.S. Artificial Intelligence roles, and law firm Willkie adopted LexisNexis’ Artificial Intelligence-powered legal assistant after rolling out Harvey. Law schools are adapting too, with Emory University School of Law launching a concentration center on Artificial Intelligence and the law in the upcoming academic year.