Grand Isle County Court in North Hero. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger It wasn’t adding up. A New Hampshire attorney representing a divorce client filed a legal brief that quoted from a previous court case. But when Vermont Supreme Court justices went to the case he referenced, the quote was nowhere to be found.In a November hearing, they asked the attorney where the quote came from.  “Your honor, my client used an AI, um, helper” said the attorney.  Justice William Cohen, now retired, responded: “The secondary source was AI? And you didn’t identify it?”  “I’m not familiar with what’s involved with it and so forth,” the attorney said. He claimed that his client offered to write the brief using artificial intelligence.  The quote came from “AI GPT or something like that,” he said later on. “I didn’t use it exactly but it’s a common one, I believe.”  After the hearing, justices on the state’s highest court chastised the attorney for his mistakes in a court filing, requiring him to file a copy of the write-up in all of his pending cases in Vermont Superior Court.  The case sheds light on how artificial intelligence may lead lawyers awry in their work — and potentially pose a threat to judicial integrity. To some leaders in the Vermont court system, the use of artificial intelligence, and the threats it could pose, seem distant and hard to estimate.  Anticipating its proliferation, the state’s judiciary has begun offering guidance on how AI is used by lawyers or in the court system, but few real guardrails exist. And while some experts see AI as a potentially great tool for lawyers, other lawyers are struggling to use it responsibly.  “AI is just not reliable, and so it’s not something that I use at all anymore, and it’s certainly not worth the effort and the time,” said Thomas Lamar Enzor, a Rutland lawyer of 38 years.  After Lamar Enzor tried using AI in a court case once, he said he’ll never use it again. He used an artificial intelligence platform, though he doesn’t remember which one, last spring, when he was representing someone charged with drunken driving in Bennington County.  Lamar Enzor used AI to help him write a motion he filed with the court, he said. And the motion written by AI included citations to quotes from other court cases. Lamar Enzor checked the AI generated work and saw the cases cited “were all cases that I’ve seen before and cases that I’ve, you know, used before,” he said.  But he didn’t realize that, while the citations referenced real court cases, the AI-generated quotes in the memo were fabricated. It’s a phenomenon called a “hallucination.”  Bennington County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Barrett pointed out five mistakes in Lamar Enzor’s filing, court records show. In almost every instance, Barrett’s filing contained quotes that didn’t exist in the sources he cited. Barrett allowed him to file a supplemental motion to correct the mistakes, and Lamar Enzor said he didn’t face other consequences.  The Vermont Supreme Court. File photo by Natalie Williams/VTDigger ‘A massive efficiency upgrade’ Attorneys in Vermont are allowed to use artificial intelligence in their work as long as they abide by the rules of professional conduct that apply to attorneys, according to Teri Corsones, the state’s court administrator.  If a client or judge thought an attorney violated those rules by using AI irresponsibly, they could file a complaint with the Professional Responsibility Board, Corsones said. The board investigates allegations of attorney misconduct and can suspend an attorney’s license to practice law.  Kim Velk, executive director of the Vermont Bar Association, said it’s hard to tell if and how many lawyers in Vermont are using AI. But it has been an important topic of conversation among lawyers, Velk said.  “People have been worried saying, ‘Well, AI isn’t going to replace lawyers. It’s going to replace lawyers who can’t use AI with lawyers who do,’” Velk said.  It’s led the bar association to host lessons on how lawyers can use AI responsibly and to their advantage. Those lessons are taught by Jared Correia, who runs a Massachusetts business that advises law firms around the world.  Correia thinks AI offers lawyers great potential. “I think it’s a massive efficiency upgrade,” he said.  When teaching attorneys how to use AI, Correia said he explains that lawyers must do 10% of the work upfront to feed the AI information about the case. Then, they can sit back and let the software do 80% of the work. The lawyer then has to put in another 10% of work at the end to thoroughly check everything, he said.  Correia said he thinks lawyers will soon be replaced by a face on a screen that can make legal arguments. In Vermont, there’s an acknowledgement of that possibility, but leaders in the field seem unsure of how it will play out, or if they can do anything to stop it.  In 2024, the Vermont Judiciary formed a committee of lawyers and judges to consider regulating AI. But after looking into the issue, committee members decided they wouldn’t yet specifically restrict how lawyers use AI as long as they follow the rules of conduct governing attorneys.  They did point out, though, that lawyers are obligated to keep some information about their clients private. If a lawyer is feeding information to an AI program without thoughtful consideration, they could be violating their client’s right to privacy, Corsones said.  Correia said that in order to keep client information private, attorneys have to vet that a software will keep their data “reasonably secure.” That might mean taking precautions like turning off settings that allow the AI to learn from the information it’s fed, Correia said. But lawyers are allowed to make the same assumptions an average consumer would based on a company’s privacy policy, he said.  “Companies bullshit about this stuff all the time, like, they don’t care about data security. That’s why the standard is reasonableness,” Correia said.  Velk said she thinks it’s possible that more defendants will represent themselves in court because AI might make it easier for them to write and understand legal filings. “Not everyone can afford an attorney, of course — few people can,” Velk said. “I would think it’s inevitable that people are going to use AI to get legal advice.”  Corsones said she doesn’t see that possibility as a potential threat to judicial integrity. Judges always make decisions based on the evidence in a case and arguments in court, she said, and artificial intelligence wouldn’t change that.  Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont has few guardrails to restrict how lawyers use AI . ...read more read less