I guess that should be “another unethical lawyer,” since Trump’s disbarred fixer was previously represented by Lanny Davis, who previously spun for the Clintons.
This, however, is funny: Cohen’s current lawyer, in arguing to a judge that court supervision of his client should be terminated now thatCohen is out of prison, included three imaginary cases in his filing last month.
“As far as the court can tell,” Manhattan federal judge Jesse M. Furman, wrote yesterday, “none of these cases exist.”
Given that Cohen is Cohen and among the most unethical people with a law degree in the country, suspicion immediately was sparked that he was behind his lawyer’s fantasies. But this is the era of nascent SkyNet, and unwitting lawyers and paralegals have already been caught using chatbots for legal research, to their sorrow. Last June, for example, a federal judge fined two lawyers $5,000 for putting their names on a legal brief containing made-up cases and citations concocted by aspiring lawyer ChatGPT. The fines were widely derided as insufficient, but judges traditionally are sympathetic when lawyers misuse technology that the judges don’t understand….at least the first time around.
So maybe Cohen’s lawyer was fooled by a bot. Another possibility is that Cohen’s lawyer, Cohen-like, just cheated. I have been told by many litigators over the years that they routinely find fake cases in their adversaries’ briefs, memos and motions.
Furman has ordered Cohen’s attorney to provide copies of the three mystery decisions within a week, or provide a sworn declaration explaining “how the motion came to cite cases that do not exist and what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played in drafting or reviewing the motion before it was filed.”
Given the client, this story is as perfect a candidate for a Nelson as I could imagine.
Ethics Alarms 
It does seem like law needs some way to conveniently search legal decisions. All other areas of knowledge seem to have search engines that do this, but the law seems to be over a hundred years behind in this.
There are easy, convenient, fast and accurate methods: Westlaw, Nexus/Lexis, CaseText, and a whole slew of state and federal reporters. The other sure way to avoid the mistake is the read the cases you are citing in your filings. I know a few lawyers who have cited “X v. Y” for the proposition “Z” only to find that the case held the exact opposite result.
jvb
If there are databases that let you search these, why are lawyers using ChatGPT? Your second suggestion does not apply. ChatGPT has a problem distinguishing a ‘search’ request from a ‘create a document that meets these requirements’ request. If you ask it to search for a ruling, it may just produce such a ruling in a realistic format, with a real judge in a real district. You won’t know the difference by reading it.
Why? Fast, easy, simple, as a base draft. If you aren’t checking your citations and reading the cases you cite, you are going to have problems.
As an exercise, I asked my son (19 years old with no legal training) to prepare a summary judgment motion for a breach of contract claim in ChatGBT. In ten minutes, he presented me with a rough draft of the motion, but the motion had no statement of facts, had cites to law from states other than Texas, and referred to the federal summary judgment standard, not Texas. Otherwise, it was pretty useless for my purposes.
jvb
Shouldn’t the lawyer’s reply be ” I take full responsibility for the error in the filing” with no mention of Cohen o anyone else?
Yes. Not only that, but if Cohen did have a role in concocting phony cases, I question whether the rules of privilege would allow the lawyer to reveal that. Since the information is confidential but not privileged, I suppose it could be disclosed.
This was exactly this issue that came to mind as I read this. It seems to put the lawyer in an untenable position of throwing his client under the bus.
I suppose it would have to be evaluated based on specific facts that that are not readily available. Did the attorney represent the documents as his work, or work written by the client and filed by the attorney on behalf of his client (possibly with a weaselly worded disclaimer that his client purports the documents to be accurate and truthful)?
Well, this attorney should immediately be appointed to the 2nd or 9th circuit of the federal courts. Both those circuits cited a nonexistent law to justify denying citizens their Constitutional rights.