Colorado Attorney Has Law License Suspended For Using ChatGPT For Briefs After It Cited Fake Cases

The Colorado Bar has suspended a Colorado attorney Zachariah Crabill after he admitted to using ChatGPT in court motions.

The law firm where he worked also fired him.

The Colorado Bar suspended him for one year and one day. However, they credited him with 90 days already served. The Bar also stayed the remainder upon Crabill’s successful completion of a two-year period of probation.

The court order stated the suspended attorney had been hired in April 2023 to prepare a motion to set aside judgment in a client’s civil case. 

Crabill later said he had never drafted such a motion. He said the caseload was overwhelming. He ended up deciding to use ChatGPT to prepare the motion. 

Crabill stated:

“Stressed out to the max. And, you know, the legal profession is highly stressful because a lot is at stake on each of these cases. And I had just been exposed to the idea of ChatGPT. And I’m trying to save him money, trying to not eat through his entire retainer. And it dawned on me: What if ChatGPT could do case load research for me? And boom, it generated seemingly impeccable case law and case citations.”

He admits using artificial intelligence to prepare the motion. However, Crabill admitted he failed to read the cases that were cited in the paperwork by ChatGPT. He also failed to verify if the citations were accurate.

Crabill filed the artificial intelligence-created motion with Colorado’s Civil Court in May 2023.

Colorado Attorney Didn’t Notify The Court After Discovering The AI Errors

He discovered that the cited cases from ChatGPT were fictitious right before the hearing.

However, the court order states Crabill did not alert the court to the sham cases at the hearing. The court also says he did not withdraw the motion after learning of the citation errors.

During the hearing, when the judge expressed concerns about the accuracy of the cases during the hearing. However, Crabill blamed a legal intern for the mistakes.

Crabill filed an affidavit with the court and admitted to using ChatGPT to draft the motion after the hearing.

Crabill has not lost faith in the technology even after losing his job.

He has now set up his own law firm named Av{AI}lable Legal Solutions. He says AI is much like a virtual legal assistant. It’s a tool that helps cut costs and level the playing field.

ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI and was launched on November 30, 2022.

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