David Lat (Original Jurisdiction), whose newsletter I very much recommend, writes about this:
Tonight brings huge news out of Sullivan & Cromwell. We can now add S&C, truly one of the world's most prestigious and profitable firms, to the AI "Hall of Shame": the list of law firms that have submitted court filings containing AI-generated "hallucinations." …
[Ironically], as noted by Joe Patrice of Above the Law, Sullivan & Cromwell is the law firm that … advises OpenAI on the "safe and ethical deployment" of artificial intelligence (a representation S&C touts on its website). Physician, heal thyself?
[And] the AI errors were called to [Dietderich's] attention by… Boies Schiller Flexner. Why is it ironic that BSF, one of the nation's leading litigation firms, caught these mistakes? Because until now, Boies Schiller was the reigning champion of "Elite Law Firms Guilty of AI Fails." (In addition to the AI snafu chronicled in that story, which took place last year, BSF subsequently failed to catch AI-generated errors in a filing by co-counsel in a different case.) …
When I covered BSF's AI error last year, I gave props to then-partner John Kucera: he "fully and freely admitted the errors, and he didn't throw any colleagues under the bus." I'll say the same here about Andy Dietderich. He's a senior partner at S&C, having joined the firm almost 30 years ago; he leads its restructuring practice, which he fonded; and he's a giant of the bankruptcy bar, Chambers Band 1. Nobody was paying him $2,500 an hour to do legal research; this screw-up was clearly the handiwork of an associate (or perhaps I should say former associate). But Dietderich signed the letter solo, and he didn't point the finger at anyone else.
