23 April 2026

AI Hallucinations from Wall Street Law Firm

Stop using AI for important stuff. Sullivan & Cromwell law firm apologizes for AI 'hallucinations' in court filing

This would be funny if it wasn't happening all the time. The client in the case should sue for every dollar they've spent with S&C in the past 3 years. And then some.

April 21 (Reuters) - Sullivan & Cromwell, a premier Wall Street law firm, apologized to a federal judge for submitting a court filing with inaccurate citations and other errors generated by artificial intelligence.

The unstated undercurrent... "Please don't disbar us for being stupid!"

This is from X. (The NYT article is behind a paywall - as they all are)

  • Fictitious Case Names: The filing included names of legal cases that do not exist
  • Fabricated Quotes: The document contained direct quotes that were never actually spoken or written
  • Non-existent Statutes: The AI incorrectly analyzed or entirely invented provisions within the U.S. Bankruptcy Code

Are you using AI to do your work? God help you, because the AI will not.

I don't actually know if the partners charge that $2000 per hour, but I wouldn't be surprised. This is how S&C describe themselves:

Sullivan & Cromwell LLP provides the highest quality legal advice and representation to clients around the world. The results the Firm achieves have set it apart for more than 140 years and have become a model for the modern practice of law.

They might need to rethink that "modern practice of law" part.

Large Language Models are NOT Truth models. They do not know what is true. They know what sounds good.

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