technology – Family Brief

Legal Research, AI and the Canary in the Mineshaft

STOP PRESS (6.6.25): The President of the KBD has his say: [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin)

One of the sobering experiences of training to be a lawyer – the dawning realisation that it isn’t all dramatic cross-examination and fighting for the underdog – is legal research. Like learning a new language (let’s say, German), it’s a long and often tedious process. Some trainees, admittedly, seem to enjoy the tedium more than others. I was firmly in the ‘not enjoying this tedium’ camp.

My own experience as a pupil in the mid-90s involved a mixture of the mundane and the complicated.

Mundane: going to the law library to find the authority, going back to the law library to find the correct authority (Official Law Report best, then All England, then FLR etc.) and the endless photocopying: should it be one or two pages of judgment per page of photocopy? An outsider might be surprised at the strength of senior lawyers’ views about zoom magnification and borders. So, back to the copier I would go, to fantasise about the claim I would bring against chambers for the damage to my retinas from exposure to all of the UV light. When this task was completed, then came creating bundles of authorities, making sufficient hard copies of my pupil master’s skeleton, and generally becoming dextrous with treasury tabs and tying red tape over briefs.

Complicated: developing an understanding of how the law works: the relationship between primary and secondary legislation, the concept of precedent (‘stare decisis’), and, above all, learning how to read a reported judgment. This may sound obvious to a non-lawyer, but it is often very difficult in considering a judgment to separate out the wheat (the binding ratio of a judgment) from the chaff (the non-binding comments, or dicta), particularly in a discretionary area of law such a family law.

In short, there were – and there are – no shortcuts to becoming a good lawyer and for all of the aforesaid tedium, this was all necessary and part of learning the essential craft of becoming a barrister (in my case), a solicitor or a legal executive.

Impact of internet and paperless working

Over time, some of these mundane tasks have become redundant. The photocopiers which were once the engine room of chambers now lie almost dormant. A trainee’s daily step count is, I suspect, a fraction of what it used to be: nowadays, there is rarely any need to leave the office or visit a law library, with the attendant opportunities for dragging one’s feet and stopping to have a cigarette. Practically everything is online, ranging from (eye-wateringly expensive) subscriptions to practitioner text books and law reports to the free resource of court judgments on BAILII and the National Archives.

While BAILII and the National Archives are tremendous legal resources and exercises in open justice, they should be used with the following health warning in mind: these judgments are, in effect, raw material. They have not been curated by professional law reporters who have summarised the essential facts and the ‘ratio’ in the headnote.

Many of the judgments that appear will have no value as precedents and cannot properly be cited (see my earlier blog, ‘What’s the Point of A Judgment‘, which should now be read with the recent retrospective approval of a handful of FR cases (see https://financialremediesjournal.com/vertix/citation-guidance.htm)

While the impact of the internet has been hugely positive in some areas (notably how quickly legal research can be undertaken), the free availability of judgments creates its own problems: reliance on inadmissible authority, not applying the rules of precedent, failing to distinguish the ratio from the dicta. To put it bluntly, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Just as there are no short cuts to learning German (despite building up a long streak on Duolingo) there is no short cut to becoming a good lawyer.

And then came Artificial Intelligence. At some point in 2023, instead of being asked ‘How can you represent a client who is guilty?’, lawyers at social occasions would be asked, ‘Will AI replace you altogether?”. For the record, the model answer to these questions is “I don’t do criminal law, and I’m not the judge, but if I did, it would be fine provided I’m not misleading the court”, and ‘Not yet, but a lot of ‘legal work’ is bound to become automated. It’s difficult to see how AI would ever be able to provide legal advice but then again, we’ve all seen the film Terminator…”

I have dabbled with ChatGPT and found it quite impressive in some areas. Open questions like “should I take my dispute to court?” or “should I always trust my barrister?” elicited impressive answers which covered points such as proportionality, delay, a barrister’s professional duties to the court and client, the assessment of evidence etc. I then asked “why are English judgments anonymised?” and ChatGPT instantly provided me a comprehensive ten point response, at the sort of level I would expect from a trainee who had been given a couple of hours to think about the question.

AI Hallucinations

Out of interest, I then asked “What are the leading cases in financial remedies”, and AI suggested a case I had not heard of before, decided in 1996 which dealt with the overarching objective of ‘fairness’.

This was both surprising and anachronistic – because that principle arose from the later case of White [2000] UKHL 54. The proffered case title, which seemed plausible, turned out not to exist. The machine learning behind AI had invented a case: a superficially plausible case with what appeared to be a correct neutral citation but a false one nevertheless. Jennifer Lee has written an excellent article on these AI ‘hallucinations’ (‘Fabricated Judicial Decisions and Hallucinations‘)

Legal research, as described above, can be a slow and tedious process. In the last decade we have all come to rely on the internet instead of the law library as the repository of statute law, judgments and (for those who can afford it) practitioner text books. Thanks to the internet it is infinitely quicker to undertake legal research and there is an obvious temptation given the pressures of time to take the short cut of quoting from an online blog or using AI.

But here lies the real danger…

The canary in the mineshaft: R (Ayinde) v LB Haringey

On 30 April 2025, Mr Justice Ritchie handed down judgment in the above case [2025] EWHC 1040 (Admin), which arose out of a claim for homeless accommodation under s. 188(3) of the Housing Act 1996. Ritchie J dealt with two applications: (1) relief from sanctions and, notably, (2) a wasted costs application made against the claimant’s barrister and solicitors. The latter application, which is relevant to this blog, concerns a barrister (who I will not name, although she is named in the judgment) who cited five cases that it turned out did not exist.

My attention was first drawn to this case from two outstanding articles which set out the facts in greater detail, from the perspective of a housing lawyer (Giles Peaker’s Nearly Legal ‘The cases that weren’t) and a general civil lawyer (Gordon Exall’s Civil Litigation Brief, ‘When Cases Relied Upon…Were Simply False’, both of which I would strongly recommend for a more detailed consideration of the legal issues.

The essential facts of the ‘wasted costs’ application were as follows:

The claimant’s statement of facts and grounds for a judicial review contained references to five non-existent cases (‘fake cases’ to adopt Ritchie J’s phrase);

When the defendant local authority sought copies of these authorities, they were palmed off in the following terms from the claimant’s solicitor (who, it should be noted, operate as a charitable law centre):

“there could be some concessions from our side in relation to any erroneous citation in the grounds, which are easily explained and can be corrected on the record if it were immediately necessary to do so. What you have not done is to refute the veracity of the points and legal arguments that prevailed against your position and any failures of your client to measure up to its obligations under the 1996 Act… let us agree that the citation errors can be corrected on the record ahead of our April hearing. Apart from adding our deepest apologies, we do not consider that we are obliged to explain anything further to you directly. You may better serve your organisation by giving attention not to the normative discoveries you have made, but whether you can locate the authorities in support of the points raised, which points you are clearly in agreement with“

This correspondence was condemned by the court in the strongest terms:

[46] That was, I must say, a remarkable letter. I do not consider that it was fair or reasonable to say that the erroneous citations could easily be explained and then to refuse to explain them. Nor do I consider it was professional, reasonable or fair to say it was not necessary to explain the citations. The assertion that they agreed to correct the citations before April never came true, for they never did. The assertion that no further explanation or obligation to provide an explanation was necessary or arose is, in my judgment, quite wrong. Worst of all, the assertion that the citations are merely cosmetic errors is a grossly unprofessional categorisation.

In court, counsel gave the following explanation for her reliance on the five fake cases;

“[53] …she kept a box of copies of cases and she kept a paper and digital list of cases with their ratios in it. She dragged and dropped the case of El Gendi from that list into this document. I do not understand that explanation or how it hangs together. If she herself had put together, through research, a list of cases and they were photocopied in a box, this case could not have been one of them because it does not exist. Secondly, if she had written a table of cases and the ratio of each case, this could not have been in that table because it does not exist. Thirdly, if she had dropped it into an important court pleading, for which she bears professional responsibility because she puts her name on it, she should not have been making the submission to a High Court Judge that this case actually ever existed, because it does not exist. I find as a fact that the case did not exist. I reject [her] explanation”

Matters proceeded to become worse for counsel:

“[55] What [counsel] says about this twice in submissions was that these are “minor citation errors”. When I challenged her the first time she backtracked on that and accepted they are serious. However, in her later submissions she returned to them being “minor citation errors”. She said there was no dishonesty and submitted that there was no material prejudice. Then she sought, remarkably, without having put in a bundle of authorities or anything in writing, to provide in submissions references to further cases which she did not put before the court, which she says made out the principles that she had put out in each paragraph containing the fake cases.”

“[58] The problem with that paragraph was not the submission that was made, which seems to me to be wholly logical, reasonable and fair in law, it was that the case of Ibrahim does not exist, it was a fake. I do find this extremely troubling. I do not accept [counsel’s] explanation for how these fake cases arose. I do not accept that she photocopied a fake case, put it in a box, tabulated it and then put it into her submissions. The only other explanation that has been provided before me, by Mr Mold, was to point the finger at [counsel] using Artificial Intelligence. I do not know whether that is true, and I cannot make a finding on it because [counsel] was not sworn and was not cross examined. However, the finding which I can make and do make is that [counsel] put a completely fake case in her submissions. That much was admitted. It is such a professional shame. The submission was a good one. The medical evidence was strong. The ground was potentially good. Why put a fake case in?”

…

[63] [Counsel] had moved on from fake High Court cases to fake Court of Appeal cases. I have no difficulty with the submission that the Respondent local authority had to ensure fair treatment of applicants in the homelessness review process, but I do have a substantial difficulty with members of the Bar who put fake cases in statements of facts and grounds.

[64] I now come to the relevant test. Has the behaviour of [counsel] and the Claimant’s solicitors been improper, unreasonable or negligent? I consider that it has been all three. It is wholly improper to put fake cases in a pleading. It was unreasonable, when it was pointed out, to say that these fake cases were “minor citation errors” or to use the phrase of the solicitors, “Cosmetic errors”. I should say it is the responsibility of the legal team, including the solicitors, to see that the statement of facts and grounds are correct. They should have been shocked when they were told that the citations did not exist. [Counsel] should have reported herself to the Bar Council. I think also that the solicitors should have reported themselves to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. I consider that providing a fake description of five fake cases, including a Court of Appeal case, qualifies quite clearly as professional misconduct.”

The court proceeded to make a wasted costs order against counsel and solicitor. One cannot help but think that a more experienced advocate would have either admitted the seriousness of the problem sooner or not made matters worse by proffering an explanation which the court rejected and found ‘extremely troubling’.

Conclusion

On a personal level, it is possible to feel sympathy for a very junior member of the Bar who appears to have taken a shortcut and relied on case citations seemingly thrown up by AI. While there was no factual finding to that effect, it is difficult to conceive of another explanation. And this problem is likely to recur, particularly in cases involving litigants in person.

There clearly was no attempt on her part to present a dishonest argument: the problem was that counsel was relying on fictitious cases rather than having undertaken proper legal research and found the actual cases in support.

This case has naturally drawn significant interest and the making of a wasted costs order, with the prospect of disciplinary proceedings, is little short of a professional nightmare.

However, Ayinde illustrates a number of broader points which are of general application, i.e.

The dangers of taking short cuts and relying on AI. Put simply, AI should either not be used at all, or should be used with the greatest possible care (with all authorities double checked and produced);
The seriousness with which a court will approach these issues when they arise;
Any lawyer proceeding in this way, making reference to cases that have been generated (hallucinations) will face the risk of wasted costs, public exposure (through publication of judgment online) and potentially disciplinary proceedings, regardless of whether the argument is properly made or not.

Ultimately, just as one cannot learn German by spending five minutes a day on Duolingo, one cannot litigate (certainly not in front of a High Court Judge) by taking the shortcut of using AI to do one’s legal research.

Alexander Chandler KC

8 May 2025

PS I am aware of the irony of having used AI to create the above image.

The Party’s Over: The Death of Legal Twitter

Like a lot of lawyers, I left Twitter over the summer.

I joined up in March 2009 (fifteen years ago!) and had a lot of fun with it: getting dopamine hits when people liked my generally inconsequential tweets; using it as a source of news and finding out about the latest court judgments; getting into conversations that were often interesting or amusing. Once in a while, a celebrity would respond and it would be exciting to have momentary contact with luminaries such as Nigella Lawson, Sir Geoffrey Boycott or Tanika Tikaram.

At best, Twitter was like a drinks party with a variety of interesting and unexpected guests. I enjoyed the process of learning to communicate with extreme brevity (originally 140 characters, later 280). The medium worked best where the tweet was dashed off: the longer you spent thinking about it or correcting the grammar, the more leaden and ineffective the outcome.

But with the internet’s combination of immediacy and permanence (‘the internet is written in ink’) comes risk. The drinks party was taking place in a room with a trap door, which in some situations could be a ‘moon door’, through which anyone could fall at any time.

Tweets that might have been intended as light-hearted became career-defining, most famously Joylon Maughan KC’s Boxing Day tweets about killing a fox with a baseball bat while wearing a kimono. A single tweet could even be career-ending. In the time it took to fly from JFK from Cape Town, a bad taste tweet about catching AIDS in Africa became viral, and the writer lost her job (‘How one stupid tweet blew up Justine Sacco’s life‘). Or an innocuous tweet could awaken the attention of some truly unpleasant and threatening trolls, ranging from trans activists to extreme conspiracy theorists.

Perhaps that sense of danger added to the excitement of Twitter. But over time, and particularly since Elon Musk’s ‘let that sink in’ takeover, the atmosphere coarsened and changed. Twitter became less fun and more tedious. Elon Musk’s tweets became increasingly unavoidable. In the drive for profits, controls were relaxed, undesirables were unblocked and a flood of cheap adverts, pro-Trump propaganda and pornography turned up. If there was a single breaking point, for me it was Musk’s tweet about the inevitability of civil war following the Southport riots. The ‘free speech crusade’ seemed to amount to little more than shouting fire in a theatre.

So, over the summer, I took the decision to leave, and I was surprised how easy it was to cut the ties. A couple of years ago I would have found it difficult. I wouldn’t say I was ever addicted to tweeting, but my tweeting habit had became a bit unhealthy. Such as when one of my children busted me tweeting, “Daughter just kicked over my coffee on tube, didn’t apologise, turns out Metro newspaper has zero absorbency, Cracking start to day”. With hindsight, public child shaming wasn’t a great look. Maybe I am as mentally ill equipped to deal with the concept of having 5,000 followers (a mere fraction compared to some other barristers) as adolescents who at least have the excuse of incompletely developed brains.

I tried a couple of alternatives and ended up on Bluesky (@familybrief.bsky.social), which is civilised and cerebral but lacks the colour and atmosphere of Twitter at its best. Posting on Bluesky reminds me of what people said when Arsenal first played at the Emirates: so quiet, its like playing football in a cathedral. Maybe that will change over time?

But the heady days of ‘legal twitter’ before Elon Musk took it over probably will never return.

Barristers and self-promotion

Let us not forget that there was a time, within living memory, when it was professional misconduct for a barrister to tout for work, whether having a business card, attending a solicitor’s drinks party of expressing a personal opinion about a case. The pendulum has now swung violently in the other direction. Social media has been populated with posts from chambers or the individual barrister about directory entries, commentary on the law (I plead guilty on both charges) and how we have successfully argued points/ secured convictions/ overturned previous orders.

But there is a spectre haunting these social media posts, and that is the spectre of regulation. An increasing number of complaints about lawyers relate to social media posts and the professional bodies have drawn up increasingly strict guidance.

BSB Guidance

On 1 September 2023, the BSB issued its Guidance for Barristers using social media. The guidance explained that ‘the special status of lawyers… in the administration of justice’ requires a restriction on the (Article 10) right to freedom of expression:

“[8] …We may consider taking regulatory action against you where your conduct on social media is such that it is potentially in breach of the BSB Handbook. The BSB is more likely to have a regulatory interest in social media use where the manner in which you express yourself is inconsistent with your obligations under the BSB Handbook. We are less likely to have an interest in the substance of the views that you hold (however unpopular they may be). However, there may be cases where the views or opinions that you express may mean that regulatory action is justifiable, for example, where you post material online which is dishonest or discriminatory.”

…

[16] The inherently public nature of social media means that anything you post online could theoretically be at risk of being read by anyone and could be linked back to your status as a barrister, regardless of whether you identify yourself on social media as a barrister. This exposure can have an impact on the extent to which public confidence in you or the profession is likely to be diminished by your use of social media. Posts or comments visible only to a limited audience may nevertheless amount to a potential breach of the BSB Handbook because there is a risk they could resurface or be shared more widely than intended (such as through saving or screenshotting).

…

In considering a potential breach of the BSB Handbook relating to your conduct on social media, we will take into account:

(a) How a hypothetical, ordinary reasonable person would be likely to respond to your conduct, having regard to the wider context in which it occurred. This will involve an objective assessment based on the “natural and ordinary meaning” of what you post. The social media platform which you use may also be relevant. The views and/or reaction of any individual who reported the conduct to us, while potentially relevant, is unlikely to be determinative.

(b) The substance of what you post (including the type of speech engaged, such as whether it is “mere gossip” or contributes to a debate in the public interest9). We recognise that political speech is afforded the highest level of protection under Article 10 and is something in which we are unlikely to have a regulatory interest. However, we are likely to have a regulatory interest in conduct which is not afforded the protections guaranteed by Article 10, by virtue of Article 17 ECHR (i.e. conduct which is aimed at the destruction of the rights and freedoms of others). Case law from the European Court of Human Rights has found that this includes extreme or grave forms of hate speech, a threat of or incitement to violence, xenophobia, racial discrimination, Antisemitism, Islamophobia and Holocaust denial.

(c) The manner in which you express your views (including the language used), the mode of publication, and the broader context. While the right to hold a view and say something may be protected by Article 10, if there is something objectionable about the manner in which it is expressed, this could be a potential breach of the BSB Handbook and therefore we may have a regulatory interest in your conduct.

(d) The impact of your conduct. This may include the impact on individuals or organisations, and/or on public trust and confidence in you or the profession. The purpose behind your conduct may not always be relevant.

Given the time it takes for regulatory complains to be heard, it is too early to know how this guidance will be enforced and what sort of reprimands a barrister will face if he/ she has been found to breach this guidance. The situation might become clearer once certain cases that are before the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal are finally heard.

Finally, there is the Updated Guidance from the LCJ on Social Media Use (October 2024)

In 2021 the Judicial Executive Board issued Social Media Guidance for the Judiciary. This has now been significantly tightened up by (internal) circulation of October 2024 Guidance which is not yet in the public domain. This follows the reprimand of Deputy Senior District Judge Ikram on 11 June 2024 following his liking of a post on LinkedIn which described Israel’s involvement in Gaza in insulting terms.

The new guidance expressly applies to all full time and part time judges, including recorders, deputy district judges, tribunal members, coroners and magistrates.

The key conclusions, which have been discussed on Bluesky, should be noted very carefully for anyone who sits including This includes the following:

‘Active use of social media… is discouraged’

No reference should be made to being a judge in any social media profile;

There is a blanket ban on posting, liking or reposting anything that “…expresses views on government policy… the legal system, political issues… ongoing court cases” regardless of whether the intention was to be humorous or ironic.

Conclusion

While many lawyers remain on Twitter and continue to post, the simple message from the regulators appears to be: when it comes to lawyers posting on social media, the party’s over.

It’s not just that Twitter (or X as I suppose it should be referred) is not the forum it used to be, and is a far darker place to inhabit.

More generally, after a decade where it seemed that almost anything goes on social media, the regulators are watching.

Alexander Chandler KC

7 November 2024