don't fear the reaper battaglia.law

Lawyers, Don’t Fear the Reaper

A.I. may be new and scary, but the legal profession should embrace it, not bogeyman it.

One of the benefits of being a licensed Florida attorney is that, every month, without fail, I receive a nice, crisp copy of The Florida Bar News. This month was like no other as I recently received the September 2024 issue. Something I’ve done since very early in my career is to flip immediately to the Disciplinary Actions section, and I read each and every one of the cases mentioned in the section.

Some of you may be thinking that I do it for gossip purposes (“ooh, who got in trouble?”), but I like to think that I’m monitoring real-life examples to ensure I stay in the correct ethics lane. I know that I’m looking for the right reasons because when I find that rare issue that contains no disciplinary actions, I’m very happy.

When I received this month’s issue, I was shocked by a headline that appeared just above the fold:

Wow. Scary. What a headline.

As a person with an extreme interest in AI, and also as an attorney who doesn’t want his identity to be misappropriated, I was immediately hooked by this “foldbait” (coined it?). “What’s this crazy AI up to now?” I thought to myself as I skipped (delayed) my monthly ethics lesson and went straight for the story. One paragraph in, I instantly recognized the name of the attorney who was affected by this incident, Matthew Weidner. Back in the day when I was a consumer debt attorney, Mr. Weidner was well-known in the consumer law circles as a prominent foreclosure defense attorney. I was even more reeled in now.

According to the Article.

According to the article, a defendant in a lawsuit hired a “litigation services” company to assist him. The article stated that the company “used generative AI to scoop up some of Weidner’s old work in a previous case.” Then, that previous work product was regurgitated (my word, not The News’), revised, and provided to the defendant to be filed in his case. And while the document was modified to include the party and caption information from the instant case, neither the litigation services company nor the defendant had the foresight to remove Mr. Weidner’s Florida Bar Number from the signature block of the pleading before it was filed.

Upon discovering this mix-up, the plaintiff in the lawsuit asked the trial court to impose sanctions against the defendant for fraud on the court. The article goes on to state that this incident is a cautionary tale about AI-generated legal documents. It sure is! Or at least I thought.

Yeeooh, boy.

I was intrigued by the story and was curious to learn more. So I did what all knowledgeable, seasoned, experienced lawyers do when setting out to research a complex legal topic — I went to google.com and I searched it up.

Doing this led me to other articles that had been written about this incident, some of which provided the defendant’s name and the county in which the case was pending (the article in the Bar News, understandably, did not include this). With this, I searched court records and was able to locate the actual case and began reviewing the filings, including the culprit filing — the one allegedly created with the assistance of AI, the Defendant’s Answer and Affirmative Defenses. I also found some others — I found the plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions and I found the defendant’s Response to the Motion for Sanctions. Interestingly, the defendant’s Response contained a signed sworn declaration from the principal of Rezidential Group, Inc., Keith Bray. Rezidential Group, Inc. is the litigation services company wrapped up in this whole situation.

Wanting to get to the bottom of this to hopefully prevent AI from stealing my identity, I read through each of the documents, which proved insightful and revealed a number of details that weren’t facially apparent from the article in The Florida Bar News.

Not a single mention.

A close examination of the documents revealed a telling story, one replete with red flags and OMGs. The allegations of the Motion for Sanctions, the defensive posturing in the defendant’s Response, and the damning admissions contained in Mr. Bray’s sworn declaration paint a picture that is, in my opinion, classic unlicensed practice of law – textbook. But! Notably absent from the four corners of the motion, the response, and the sworn declaration is any reference, whatsoever, to AI or artificial intelligence. Not a single mention of it.

There I fixed it.

This is a serious and concerning situation that absolutely impacts our industry and so The Florida Bar News should, of course, have written the article to raise awareness. However, in my opinion, rather than sensationalizing the AI angle (which I still have not found evidence to support), the headline should have been:

This serious situation can and should be dealt with appropriately. The article in the Bar News did say that a UPL complaint had been filed. Good. I hope that there is a fair and just investigation into the matter. And I hope that, if substantiated, they throw the book at the perpetrator. But that is where the blame should start and end – the actions of a human. This was not a case of Chatbots Gone Wild. There was no prompting or hallucinating to hang this bogus e-filing on. ChatGPT and Bard (I still call him Bard) were home sleeping. There was not a single mention of AI, not an iota. Nope, this was nothing more than the actions of a person who, in my opinion based upon his own admission, engaged in the unlicensed practice of law in Florida.

Rather than implicating AI when it wasn’t the culprit, the more immediate and pressing concern here should be to ensure that our existing body of laws designed to address this bad human behavior are utilized and enforce – not to make AI a bogeyman. Save that for when it really happens.

The Unlicensed Practice of Law.

The unlicensed practice of law in Florida is a serious offense with significant consequences. It not only undermines the integrity of the legal profession but also poses a risk to the public. Individuals who engage in this practice may face criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment. Additionally, they can be subject to civil lawsuits and administrative actions that could impact their ability to ever become licensed in the future. The unlicensed practice of law can lead to serious legal, financial, and reputational harm, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that only qualified attorneys are providing legal services.

My final thought.

There are over 100,000 attorneys in Florida, all of whom I assume receive the same copy of The Florida Bar News that I do. And while I’m hopeful that all of them pick up their copy each month, chomping at the bit to read some letters to the editor and to brush up on ethics – one story about commingled trust funds at a time – I’m sure that a great number do not open the issue at all. And even for those who opened it, I’m positive that an even smaller percentage took the extra step to locate and research the underlying case filings. Therefore, that sensational headline, parked just above the fold, is now fodder for all my Ludditical colleagues who fear the Reaper – the AI that is rounding the corner to steal our lunch money.

AI is coming whether we like it or not, and it has the potential to revolutionize the legal profession unlike anything that’s happened during my career, and likely during the careers of anyone reading these words right now. AI can be both the biggest benefit to our profession while also simultaneously the largest threat, and so it needs to be treated with the respect that it deserves. You don’t ignore the most magnificent rose you’ve ever seen because it has thorns; you just handle it a little more carefully. But if we look to vilify AI at every turn by telling scary stories of the AI bogeyman, we are doing our profession and, ultimately, our clients, a disservice.

don't fear the reaper battaglia.law

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