Sullivan & Cromwell, a Wall Street law firm, recently apologized to a New York judge after submitting a court filing that contained numerous inaccurate legal citations and fake passages generated by AI. The errors, referred to as AI "hallucinations," were identified by opposing counsel, leading the firm to file a corrected version of the documents.
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This aged well...
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If they have done it, I'm sure other well established firms have too. They just got caught
Several have gotten caught so far
This is why the founding partner of my firm does not trust AI
I swear there’s going to be an AI crash and it’s going to bring down the stock market. Something like 30% of the past two years’ gains of the S&P 500 have been from just a handful of tech companies whose values rose mostly due to AI hype.
Sullivan & Cromwell law firm apologizes for AI 'hallucinations' in court filing | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/sullivan-cromwell-law-firm-apologizes-ai-hallucinations-court-filing-2026-04-21/
AI 'hallucinations' created errors in court filing, top law firm says | New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/nyregion/sullivan-cromwell-ai-hallucination.html
Sullivan & Cromwell Apologizes to Judge for AI Hallucinations | Bloomberg Law News
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/sullivan-cromwell-apologizes-to-judge-for-ai-hallucinations
Sullivan & Cromwell Files Emergency ‘Please Don’t Sanction Us For All These AI Hallucinations’ Letter | Above the Law
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/04/sullivan-cromwell-files-emergency-please-dont-sanction-us-for-all-these-ai-hallucinations-letter/
AI is not 100% reliable. True.
However, even with supplemental research, proofreading and cross checking, AI still reduces manual effort by a significant amount (say ~75%).
Thus, lawyers should view AI in the same light they would research provided by a junior lawyer - helpful but not to be blindly relied upon.
Sullivan & Cromwell needs to update their website
Pro
This is the worst timeline.
The one where people are criticizing AI, or the one where AI is failing?
You have to double check that stuff, especially when stakes are high. That’s easy to say though. I always give my AI outputs the sniff test but I’m sure there’s been things that have slipped through over the years.
AI is really good at fooling the sniff test, that’s the problem. When you have to double check every single word it says, how is it a reliable tool
Pro
So, the controls failed to prevent this mistake. What new controls will they put in place to prevent this mistake from happening again? The root cause is that the time pressure of the workload incentivized staff to skip the tedious verification process. To prevent recurrence, they need a solution that solves the tension.
This is easy: every attorney has to read a case any time they cite it in any pleading to make sure it’s real and stands for the proposition for which they are citing it. Every one knows this. People who don’t do it are just lazy.
Someone’s getting fired
This is so embarrassing. You’d think people would know by now.