A federal district court judge in New York’s Southern District recently used her discretion to warn a self-represented litigant about submitting false and nonexistent legal authority to the Court. Sanctions may be imposed for submitting false and nonexistent legal authority to the Court. See, e.g., Park v. Kim, 91 F.4th 610, 613-16 (2d Cir. 2024)…
Category: Claude
Four different prompts. Asking Claude.ai to help understand a divided appellate decision
Three justices wrote when the Michigan Supreme Court released Thursday’s 62-page decision in Shareef El-Jamaly v Kirco Manix Const (164902-4). Justice Welch penned the 32-page majority (joined by Justices Bernstein, Cavanagh, and Bolden). Chief Justice Clement filed a 3-page opinion that concurred and dissented in part. Justice Zahra authored a 27-page dissent (joined by Justice…
Prompting Claude.ai to create tables of disagreement and agreement in the indigent/expert-witness decision People v Warner (163805)
A divided Michigan Supreme Court released its 39-page decision in People v Warner (163805) last Thursday. I deleted the Syllabus pages and put Claude.ai (a next-generation AI assistant) to work on the majority and dissenting opinions by creating tables showing the areas of disagreement and agreement. Here is the prompt: Create a three-column table that outlines the key…
Using Claude.ai to understand the package-deal plea withdrawal decision People v Samuels (164050)
A divided Michigan Supreme Court released its 32-page decision in People v Samuels (164050) on Friday. I deleted the Syllabus pages and put Claude.ai (a next-generation AI assistant) to work on the majority and dissenting opinions. First, I asked Claudi.ai to outline the decision using this complex prompt: Draft an opinion outline of the attached…
Prompting Claude.ai and ChatGPT to outline a new Michigan Supreme Court decision
Today, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a split opinion in People v Prude (Docket 165664)—a case that was decided without oral argument. Because users can now attach files with their “prompts” when using the free versions of the generative AI tools Claude.ai and ChatGPT, I decided to take each for a spin to outline the…
Protective orders that prohibit submitting confidential discovery material to open generative AI tools
In a sign of the AI times, the federal court in the Southern District of New York recently entered a protective order that includes an AI-restriction paragraph:
Asking Claude.ai to outline a court decision
Last August, I shared my experience using Claude.ai to outline case briefs (pretty good!). Today, I took the current (free) version of Claude.ai for a spin to outline a recent unanimous Michigan Supreme Court opinion. tl;dr: Claude.ai did a really good job. My only quibble is that it left out the role of one of…
How judges can draft and add easy-to-understand summaries in their written decisions
Summary for Pro Se Plaintiff The magistrate judge is recommending that the motion for summary judgment be granted. Your evidence does not show that Nurse Yule, Nurse Practitioner Housley, or Dr. Wong acted in ways that they knew were likely to cause you additional harm or suffering. Such evidence is required to show a violation…
Testing should be believing: AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, etc. cannot be used for primary legal research or drafting
Given the continuing reports about lawyers being referred for professional discipline or self-represented litigants being sanctioned for AI-generated court filings that include bogus content, today I took the most common (and free version) AI tools for a legal research and writing test. TL;DR: Do not use. Spare yourself the risk of sanctions and professional discipline….
Putting Claude.ai to work creating outlines of filed court briefs
Given Anthropic’s Claude.ai’s impressive ability to handle .pdf uploads and complex prompts, it seemed only right to upload public efiled court briefing, put the AI-created output in comparative table form, and see how things would go. Overall? Pretty darn good! Check out how well (with a couple of misses) Claude followed my instructions on how to…