From Judge Paul Engelmayer's order Thursday in J.G. v. N.Y. City Dep't of Ed. (S.D.N.Y.), deciding on attorney fees to be awarded under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act:
The Cuddy Law Firm also states that its requested hourly rates are supported by feedback it received from the artificial intelligence tool "ChatGPT-4."
In fairness, the Cuddy Law Firm does not predominantly rely on ChatGPT-4 in advocating for these billing rates. It instead presents ChatGPT-4 as a "cross-check" supporting the problematic sources above. As such, the Court need not dwell at length on this point.
It suffices to say that the Cuddy Law Firm's invocation of ChatGPT as support for its aggressive fee bid is utterly and unusually unpersuasive. As the firm should have appreciated, treating ChatGPT's conclusions as a useful gauge of the reasonable billing rate for the work of a lawyer with a particular background carrying out a bespoke assignment for a client in a niche practice area was misbegotten at the jump.
