Sullivan & Cromwell LLP has apologised to a US bankruptcy court after admitting that a filing in ongoing insolvency proceedings contained inaccurate citations generated by artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
In a letter to Chief Judge Martin Glenn of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the law firm said that an emergency motion filed earlier in the matter of In re Prince Global Holdings Limited contained “inaccurate citations and other errors.”
The firm acknowledged that some of these errors arose from AI “hallucinations”, instances where AI tools fabricate case law, misquote authorities or generate non-existent legal sources.
The Court was informed that the firm’s internal policies governing the use of AI tools were not followed while preparing the motion. The firm also admitted that its standard review process failed to detect the inaccuracies before the document was filed.
Partner Andrew G Dietderich, who wrote the letter, took responsibility for the lapse and apologised on behalf of the firm. He said that the firm was “keenly aware” of its obligation to ensure the accuracy of all court filings. He said,
"I want to assure the Court that the Firm’s policies governing AI use are both clear and rigorous. Access to AI tools is conditioned on completion of mandatory training. Before any Firm lawyer is granted access to generative AI tools, the lawyer must complete two required training modules, completion of which is tracked and verified."
Sullivan & Cromwell stated that it maintains strict protocols on the use of generative AI. These include mandatory training for lawyers and a requirement that all AI-generated output be independently verified before being used in legal work.
Despite these safeguards, the firm admitted that they were not adhered to in this instance.
Following the discovery of the errors, the firm conducted a review of its filings in the case and said that it did not identify any further AI-related issues. However, it disclosed certain clerical and non-substantive errors in other documents, which have also been corrected.
A revised version of the motion, along with a redline showing the corrections, has since been filed before the Court.
The firm also said that it had reached out to opposing counsel Boies Schiller Flexner LLP to apologise for the errors after they were brought to its attention.
The filing contained incorrect citations to cases like Three Arrows Capital and BYJU’s Alpha, misquoted judicial observations, scrambled citations and garbled text such as duplicated words and broken sentences, indicating AI-generated errors and unverified legal authorities.
[Read Letter]