DENVER (KDVR) — MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and his legal team have to explain themselves to a federal judge in Colorado after she discovered a recent brief they submitted pointed to fake court cases as evidence.
The brief was submitted as part of an ongoing defamation case involving a former executive at Dominion Voting Systems that was filed against Lindell in 2022.
According to court documents, federal judge Nina Wang found about 30 defective citations in a brief Lindell’s legal team filed in February. The defects range from misquotes to “citations of cases that do not exist.”
Court documents show the brief was generated by artificial intelligence.
“You can use it. It’s not a prohibition, but you have to go check the [citations]. If you’re going to cite ‘People vs. Smith’ and this is the case number, you’ve got to go look to see, ‘Is there such a case?’”, Denver attorney David Lane said.
Lane is not involved with the case but said it will be one the entire law community keeps a close eye on.
“A lot of people have predicted the demise of a chunk of the legal profession because it will be substituted by AI who can write a brief in five minutes that a lawyer would take five weeks to generate,” Lane said.
Lane said many lawyers use AI to cut down on the time it takes to craft court documents. He said the technology is not good enough yet to fully replace legal staff, however.
“There’s a thing out there called AI hallucinations, which AI simply makes things up,” Lane said. “If any lawyer is ridiculous enough to rely only on AI to write a brief, they deserve to be held in contempt.”
Wang has ordered Lindell, attorney Christopher Kachouroff and another member of the legal team, Jennifer DeMaster, to demonstrate why they should not face court sanctions and be referred for disciplinary action.
Lindell’s legal team admits to using AI, saying in a document filed Friday, “There is nothing wrong with using AI when properly used.”
Kachouroff contested that the document in question was an earlier draft submitted by mistake due to “human error.” The latest filing also alleges they did not realize the mistake until Judge Wang questioned them without notice in open court 55 days after it was submitted.
“There was no lack of diligence on the part of Defense counsel and no intent to mislead this Court whatsoever,” the Friday filing stated.
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