Pinsent Masons is not the only City law firm walking a dangerous AI tightrope

A junior lawyer at Pinsent Masons used AI to draft misleading emails for a High Court case, highlighting how generational attitudes and lack of training risk new mistakes as law firms rush to adopt new technology, writes Maria Ward-Brennan.

It has been a slow burner, but we finally have the first notable UK law firm facing criticism in court over AI-generated legal evidence riddled with errors.

Pinsent Masons is currently the deer in headlights, but its mistakes are only the tip of the iceberg for the wider sector when it comes to law firms’ relationship with AI.

A junior lawyer at Pinsent Masons, who, if an NQ, will be on around a £100,000 salary, used AI to draft “misleading” emails containing hallucinations sent to the High Court in an insolvency case.

Judge Mullen said it is “concerning” that the junior solicitor used AI instead of reading an official resource on the Insolvency Act’s rules. The incident led the firm to refer itself to the legal regulator, the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA), which has confirmed it is looking into the matter and will decide on the next steps.

The firm has not replied to City AM‘s request on whether the junior is still employed at the firm.

There have been a few red flags in London courts, from people representing themselves to immigration solicitors, while across the pond, elite US firm Sullivan and Cromwell had to issue its own apology for AI hallucinations in a New York bankruptcy case.

Lawyers are notoriously risk-averse people and many senior roles at big law firms have been a bit slower to adopt AI than in other business sectors. But given the nature of business, firms have had to get on board to remain competitive.

Mishap raises questions

The problem is that Big Law is giving junior lawyers more and more responsibility, probably to try to justify their hefty six-figure salaries, but this tactic has always been a risky one.

Like all sectors, juniors are facing a completely different work environment than the cohorts before them. They aren’t being trained the same way their peers were trained. Threading through case law for a partner or getting paper cuts from flicking through court documents is no longer necessary, as AI can do this work in seconds.

It is not as if lawyers have never made mistakes before, but there is a big difference between forgetting something and creating a completely fake document – via AI hallucination.

The other issue, on top of juniors lacking the skills to spot errors, is that juniors don’t share the same attitude toward AI as those they report to. Many of these juniors have used AI in school and in their law degrees.

Their attitude towards AI is more like automatic belief rather than questioning the wisdom of it.

This is evident in Pinsent Mason’s junior’s case as the chat-bot transcript actually included a warning from the AI that it was “not fully confident” it was reproducing the exact statutory wording, advising the lawyer to verify it before submitting it to a court.

However, the client is not only paying for the junior lawyer’s time (albeit at an increasingly high price), but they actually instructed the firm’s partner. The junior lawyer seems to be taking the brunt of the blame, but that blame should be passed onto the senior associate and partner.

The headlines might all focus on Pinsent Masons right now, but in reality, many law firms are narrowly avoiding similar embarrassment.

What Pinsent faced was a judge who knew insolvency principles so well that he was shocked to see something quoted that didn’t make sense to him. Although the firm didn’t help itself by trying to worm its way out of it when the judge caught them out with a ‘summary conclusion’ excuse.

Nonetheless, with ‘AI hallucination’ becoming more prevalent, clients might not be as quick as a judge to spot mistakes, but if this continues to be a problem, clients – and – judges will have to start running a second eye over the work.

At that point, lawyers will find it increasingly difficult to explain their hefty hourly bills.

Eyes on the Law is a weekly column focused on the legal sector.