The 14-page motion looked like any standard court filing in a civil lawsuit. Filed in April in San Diego Superior Court, attorneys defending a local company were making a routine request for a judge to authorize additional expert witnesses in a vehicle collision injury case.

But on the sixth page of the motion, the attorneys cited legal authority from a case that does not exist — it was hallucinated by artificial intelligence.

RELATED: Stanford AI expert’s credibility shattered by fake, AI-created sources: judge

A San Diego judge wrote in October that she was “deeply troubled” by the conduct of the company’s civil defense attorneys. She found they had filed multiple documents containing AI hallucinations, including citations to non-existent cases, fake quotes from real cases and inaccurate citations to real but irrelevant legal authorities.

That is one of at least two known San Diego cases that are part of a troubling trend of attorneys abusing or misusing AI, especially generative AI, a powerful technology that can at times fabricate information with no basis in reality.

But even as legal watchdog groups have documented hundreds of AI hallucination cases in the U.S. and around the world, legal experts and attorneys say those cases are rare, arguing that AI is an important tool being put to good use throughout the legal profession, helping lawyers research case law, analyze evidence, draft contracts and complete any number of rote tasks.

“We can’t just ignore generative AI, we have to become experts in the use so that we can avoid issues … where hallucinated case law gets into final documents,” Bryan McWhorter, a patent attorney and partner at the firm Knobbe Martens, said in an interview. “But I think when leveraged correctly, generative AI is frankly a power tool. It’s going to allow me to produce higher-quality work product in less time and deliver that value to clients.”

RELATED: California issues historic fine over lawyer’s ChatGPT fabrications

McWhorter recently argued that AI cannot now and likely never will be able to replace human legal analysis. That’s a view shared by James Cooper, a professor at California Western School of Law in downtown San Diego and co-author of the book “A Short & Happy Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Lawyers.”

“It complements all our skill sets,” Cooper said. “(But) there still needs to be a human in the loop.”

Cooper said there will always be subtlety in fact-finding and questioning people “that robots don’t understand … AI tools can’t fully engage with the nuance of humankind.”

Even so, Cooper is concerned that the use of AI in the legal field may be advancing too rapidly, and he hopes attorneys and firms are implementing safeguards that lawmakers and regulators have not.

“We’re at a juncture now where the technology is far outpacing our ability to regulate it, both as a legal profession but also in the real world, in a non-legal context,” Cooper said. “… We don’t know yet where to put the guardrails.”

‘Risks are no different’

As the use of AI has exploded in recent years, legal organizations have grappled with what sort of guidelines and policies to put in place to ensure that attorneys who use the technology do so ethically and responsibly. That can look different for a patent lawyer such as McWhorter and attorneys who litigate criminal and civil cases before judges, though the basic principles are largely the same.

“Broadly speaking, (the) risks are no different than we’ve always had in the industry, which is we must produce work that is 100% accurate and maintains all of our ethical obligations regarding client confidentiality,” McWhorter said.

For courtroom litigators, a federal judge in New York helped set the standard for the use of the technology in June 2023 while presiding over a case in which attorneys filed documents containing AI hallucinations. He wrote that there is “nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance,” but also noted that existing rules required that attorneys ensure the accuracy of every filing.

RELATED: Chatbot dreams generate AI nightmares for Bay Area lawyers

That has been the theme of most court opinions and bar association guidelines issued since then.

“Simply stated, no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations — whether provided by generative AI or any other source — that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified,” wrote a panel of judges from California’s Second Appellate District.

The judges said the September opinion was the first by a California court to address “the generation of fake legal authority by AI sources” and should double as a warning for all attorneys in the state.

The American Bar Association and California State Bar have issued similar guidelines that AI cannot replace the judgment of trained lawyers and that attorneys should not become overly reliant on the technology.

Cooper, McWhorter and organizations such as the ABA all agree that there is a long list of legitimate uses of AI technology in the law. Much of it is geared toward helping summarize and analyze large data sets, while other tools can help be a middle step in crafting writing.

“The best analogy is we are creating the bones of the strategy, generative AI is adding the first-pass flesh onto those bones and then we’re going back and sculpting it into the final creation,” McWhorter said. “It’s really an intermediary in the process; it’s neither a beginning nor an end.”

‘Erodes trust in the legal profession’

Thus far, the most obvious and visible risk that has emerged in the use of AI in legal work is that of hallucinations. Several watchdog groups have been tracking cases in which court filings have contained AI hallucinations.

While the databases show that many such instances involve pro se litigants, or non-attorneys representing themselves, hundreds of licensed attorneys have also been sanctioned, reprimanded or otherwise caught submitting filings containing AI hallucinations, according to one such database compiled by attorney and researcher Damien Charlotin. His database only tracks cases in which a court has explicitly found or implied that a party relied on hallucinated content.

Charlotin’s database includes three cases in which U.S. judges were found to have written orders or opinions containing AI hallucinations. Meanwhile, the New York Times recently reported that a district attorney in Northern California has been accused of filing briefs containing mistakes typical of AI, one of the first known cases involving suspicions of prosecutorial misuse of the technology.

So far in San Diego, there are two known cases involving court documents containing AI hallucinations.

On Oct. 2, a panel of judges from the California Court of Appeals’ 4th Appellate District sanctioned longtime San Diego criminal defense attorney George Siddell, finding that he violated the Rules of Professional Conduct. They ordered him to pay $1,500 as part of the sanction.

A member of the California State Bar since 1971, Siddell admitted to filing a motion in a client’s criminal appeal that contained a citation to a case that doesn’t exist, a fake quote from a real case and two citations to cases that did not address the issues for which they were cited, according to a published appellate opinion. Siddell declined to comment for this story.

The judges wrote that Siddell’s conduct, when compared to similar conduct by attorneys in civil matters, was “particularly disturbing because it involves the rights of a criminal defendant, who is entitled to due process … and representation by competent counsel.”

The next day, San Diego Superior Court Judge Carolyn Caietti ruled that two attorneys from Tyson & Mendes, a national firm headquartered in San Diego, had filed multiple documents containing AI hallucinations in the case defending the local company in the auto injury lawsuit.

A Tyson & Mendes partner wrote in a declaration prior to the ruling that he took responsibility for the mistakes, though he blamed the errors on a younger associate attorney who he said “neglected to confirm the accuracy of certain case citations.”

In her own declaration, the associate attorney took responsibility and wrote that she was fired from the firm “as a direct result of my actions and conduct in this case.”

In a statement provided by Tyson & Mendes, the firm said in part: “As the Court in this case noted, we accept responsibility for our obligation to present the highest quality work product to the Court. We affirm this responsibility, even and especially in the face of technological transformation.”

The firm also added a lengthy explanation about how it is endeavoring to be a leader in the use of AI in the legal industry.

“As the practice of law continues to evolve through new challenges, opportunities, and technologies, we must also continue to hold ourselves accountable through introspection and transparency,” the firm said in its statement. “Tyson & Mendes remains steadfast in our commitment to our clients, our industry, and our profession to leverage the transformative power of AI and new technologies with keen professional and ethical judgment, ongoing education, and agility.”

Caietti did not ultimately sanction either attorney, though her decision was based on procedural issues rather than their conduct.

“Notwithstanding the denial on procedural grounds, the Court is deeply troubled by the conduct of Defense counsel,” Caietti wrote. “… All of this conduct is contrary to the rules of professional responsibility and is the type of conduct that erodes trust in the legal profession … This is hopefully an experience that will never be repeated by the attorneys involved in this matter, let alone others in the profession.”

Client confidentiality

Since AI learns from the data fed to it by its users, attorneys must also take care that confidential client information is not used to train AI models and that it does not inadvertently become public.

For patent attorneys such as McWhorter, those risks revolve around business interests and market competition. Other areas of the law — Cooper mentioned due process and evidentiary issues, as examples — could implicate constitutional rights and protections.

Cooper said that unless and until there are stronger regulations, it will be up to each attorney and law firm to understand the AI technology they use and mitigate any potential risks and harms.

‘Effectively and ethically’

Newer attorneys especially run the risk of becoming over-reliant on AI tools without first building a foundational knowledge of how to practice the law, Cooper said.

At California Western School of Law, the use of AI is a balancing act. The faculty is navigating how best to ensure that students don’t abuse AI technology in their coursework while also teaching them how practicing attorneys are using it.

“We’re trying to make sure that we prepare our students to be able to enter the workforce, enter the profession, and use it effectively and ethically,” said Liam Vavasour, vice dean for academic affairs.

Vavasour said students are not allowed to use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for writing assignments unless given explicit permission to do so, and even then the use is typically limited to idea-generation or editing and must be disclosed.

Vavasour said that from his understanding, practicing attorneys and judges are using AI in a variety of ways, “so we’re trying to make sure that our students know how to use it effectively and some of the pitfalls to avoid.”

McWhorter supervises younger associates at his firm and believes fears about them being over-reliant on AI are overblown.

“Because the value of generative AI is not in legal strategy, (young attorneys) will develop the ability to provide legal strategy the same as anyone else,” McWhorter said.

Source link


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The post Attorneys balance use of powerful AI tools with risks — including legal hallucinations – The Mercury News appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

The 14-page motion looked like any standard court filing in a civil lawsuit. Filed in April in San Diego Superior Court, attorneys defending a local company were making a routine request for a judge to authorize additional expert witnesses in a vehicle collision injury case.

But on the sixth page of the motion, the attorneys cited legal authority from a case that does not exist — it was hallucinated by artificial intelligence.

RELATED: Stanford AI expert’s credibility shattered by fake, AI-created sources: judge

A San Diego judge wrote in October that she was “deeply troubled” by the conduct of the company’s civil defense attorneys. She found they had filed multiple documents containing AI hallucinations, including citations to non-existent cases, fake quotes from real cases and inaccurate citations to real but irrelevant legal authorities.

That is one of at least two known San Diego cases that are part of a troubling trend of attorneys abusing or misusing AI, especially generative AI, a powerful technology that can at times fabricate information with no basis in reality.

But even as legal watchdog groups have documented hundreds of AI hallucination cases in the U.S. and around the world, legal experts and attorneys say those cases are rare, arguing that AI is an important tool being put to good use throughout the legal profession, helping lawyers research case law, analyze evidence, draft contracts and complete any number of rote tasks.

“We can’t just ignore generative AI, we have to become experts in the use so that we can avoid issues … where hallucinated case law gets into final documents,” Bryan McWhorter, a patent attorney and partner at the firm Knobbe Martens, said in an interview. “But I think when leveraged correctly, generative AI is frankly a power tool. It’s going to allow me to produce higher-quality work product in less time and deliver that value to clients.”

RELATED: California issues historic fine over lawyer’s ChatGPT fabrications

McWhorter recently argued that AI cannot now and likely never will be able to replace human legal analysis. That’s a view shared by James Cooper, a professor at California Western School of Law in downtown San Diego and co-author of the book “A Short & Happy Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Lawyers.”

“It complements all our skill sets,” Cooper said. “(But) there still needs to be a human in the loop.”

Cooper said there will always be subtlety in fact-finding and questioning people “that robots don’t understand … AI tools can’t fully engage with the nuance of humankind.”

Even so, Cooper is concerned that the use of AI in the legal field may be advancing too rapidly, and he hopes attorneys and firms are implementing safeguards that lawmakers and regulators have not.

“We’re at a juncture now where the technology is far outpacing our ability to regulate it, both as a legal profession but also in the real world, in a non-legal context,” Cooper said. “… We don’t know yet where to put the guardrails.”

‘Risks are no different’

As the use of AI has exploded in recent years, legal organizations have grappled with what sort of guidelines and policies to put in place to ensure that attorneys who use the technology do so ethically and responsibly. That can look different for a patent lawyer such as McWhorter and attorneys who litigate criminal and civil cases before judges, though the basic principles are largely the same.

“Broadly speaking, (the) risks are no different than we’ve always had in the industry, which is we must produce work that is 100% accurate and maintains all of our ethical obligations regarding client confidentiality,” McWhorter said.

For courtroom litigators, a federal judge in New York helped set the standard for the use of the technology in June 2023 while presiding over a case in which attorneys filed documents containing AI hallucinations. He wrote that there is “nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance,” but also noted that existing rules required that attorneys ensure the accuracy of every filing.

RELATED: Chatbot dreams generate AI nightmares for Bay Area lawyers

That has been the theme of most court opinions and bar association guidelines issued since then.

“Simply stated, no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations — whether provided by generative AI or any other source — that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified,” wrote a panel of judges from California’s Second Appellate District.

The judges said the September opinion was the first by a California court to address “the generation of fake legal authority by AI sources” and should double as a warning for all attorneys in the state.

The American Bar Association and California State Bar have issued similar guidelines that AI cannot replace the judgment of trained lawyers and that attorneys should not become overly reliant on the technology.

Cooper, McWhorter and organizations such as the ABA all agree that there is a long list of legitimate uses of AI technology in the law. Much of it is geared toward helping summarize and analyze large data sets, while other tools can help be a middle step in crafting writing.

“The best analogy is we are creating the bones of the strategy, generative AI is adding the first-pass flesh onto those bones and then we’re going back and sculpting it into the final creation,” McWhorter said. “It’s really an intermediary in the process; it’s neither a beginning nor an end.”

‘Erodes trust in the legal profession’

Thus far, the most obvious and visible risk that has emerged in the use of AI in legal work is that of hallucinations. Several watchdog groups have been tracking cases in which court filings have contained AI hallucinations.

While the databases show that many such instances involve pro se litigants, or non-attorneys representing themselves, hundreds of licensed attorneys have also been sanctioned, reprimanded or otherwise caught submitting filings containing AI hallucinations, according to one such database compiled by attorney and researcher Damien Charlotin. His database only tracks cases in which a court has explicitly found or implied that a party relied on hallucinated content.

Charlotin’s database includes three cases in which U.S. judges were found to have written orders or opinions containing AI hallucinations. Meanwhile, the New York Times recently reported that a district attorney in Northern California has been accused of filing briefs containing mistakes typical of AI, one of the first known cases involving suspicions of prosecutorial misuse of the technology.

So far in San Diego, there are two known cases involving court documents containing AI hallucinations.

On Oct. 2, a panel of judges from the California Court of Appeals’ 4th Appellate District sanctioned longtime San Diego criminal defense attorney George Siddell, finding that he violated the Rules of Professional Conduct. They ordered him to pay $1,500 as part of the sanction.

A member of the California State Bar since 1971, Siddell admitted to filing a motion in a client’s criminal appeal that contained a citation to a case that doesn’t exist, a fake quote from a real case and two citations to cases that did not address the issues for which they were cited, according to a published appellate opinion. Siddell declined to comment for this story.

The judges wrote that Siddell’s conduct, when compared to similar conduct by attorneys in civil matters, was “particularly disturbing because it involves the rights of a criminal defendant, who is entitled to due process … and representation by competent counsel.”

The next day, San Diego Superior Court Judge Carolyn Caietti ruled that two attorneys from Tyson & Mendes, a national firm headquartered in San Diego, had filed multiple documents containing AI hallucinations in the case defending the local company in the auto injury lawsuit.

A Tyson & Mendes partner wrote in a declaration prior to the ruling that he took responsibility for the mistakes, though he blamed the errors on a younger associate attorney who he said “neglected to confirm the accuracy of certain case citations.”

In her own declaration, the associate attorney took responsibility and wrote that she was fired from the firm “as a direct result of my actions and conduct in this case.”

In a statement provided by Tyson & Mendes, the firm said in part: “As the Court in this case noted, we accept responsibility for our obligation to present the highest quality work product to the Court. We affirm this responsibility, even and especially in the face of technological transformation.”

The firm also added a lengthy explanation about how it is endeavoring to be a leader in the use of AI in the legal industry.

“As the practice of law continues to evolve through new challenges, opportunities, and technologies, we must also continue to hold ourselves accountable through introspection and transparency,” the firm said in its statement. “Tyson & Mendes remains steadfast in our commitment to our clients, our industry, and our profession to leverage the transformative power of AI and new technologies with keen professional and ethical judgment, ongoing education, and agility.”

Caietti did not ultimately sanction either attorney, though her decision was based on procedural issues rather than their conduct.

“Notwithstanding the denial on procedural grounds, the Court is deeply troubled by the conduct of Defense counsel,” Caietti wrote. “… All of this conduct is contrary to the rules of professional responsibility and is the type of conduct that erodes trust in the legal profession … This is hopefully an experience that will never be repeated by the attorneys involved in this matter, let alone others in the profession.”

Client confidentiality

Since AI learns from the data fed to it by its users, attorneys must also take care that confidential client information is not used to train AI models and that it does not inadvertently become public.

For patent attorneys such as McWhorter, those risks revolve around business interests and market competition. Other areas of the law — Cooper mentioned due process and evidentiary issues, as examples — could implicate constitutional rights and protections.

Cooper said that unless and until there are stronger regulations, it will be up to each attorney and law firm to understand the AI technology they use and mitigate any potential risks and harms.

‘Effectively and ethically’

Newer attorneys especially run the risk of becoming over-reliant on AI tools without first building a foundational knowledge of how to practice the law, Cooper said.

At California Western School of Law, the use of AI is a balancing act. The faculty is navigating how best to ensure that students don’t abuse AI technology in their coursework while also teaching them how practicing attorneys are using it.

“We’re trying to make sure that we prepare our students to be able to enter the workforce, enter the profession, and use it effectively and ethically,” said Liam Vavasour, vice dean for academic affairs.

Vavasour said students are not allowed to use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for writing assignments unless given explicit permission to do so, and even then the use is typically limited to idea-generation or editing and must be disclosed.

Vavasour said that from his understanding, practicing attorneys and judges are using AI in a variety of ways, “so we’re trying to make sure that our students know how to use it effectively and some of the pitfalls to avoid.”

McWhorter supervises younger associates at his firm and believes fears about them being over-reliant on AI are overblown.

“Because the value of generative AI is not in legal strategy, (young attorneys) will develop the ability to provide legal strategy the same as anyone else,” McWhorter said.

Source link


Attorneys and law firms can elevate their online presence with professionally written content from SEO Content Writing Services monthly plan. Our team of experienced writers specializes in crafting blog posts, articles, and written content that accurately reflect the expertise and knowledge of our clients in the legal field. With a keen eye for detail and a thorough understanding of legal terminology, we provide high-quality writing that helps our clients stand out from their competition and engage with their target audience. Trust SEO Content Writing Services for one time article writing or monthly written content to handle all of your written content needs and showcase your law firm's expertise.
If you need written content, blog posts, or articles professionally written for your website, we can help. Go HERE to find out more.
or email us here: myseowritingservices@gmail.com
To find out more about our article writing or blog post services, fill out the form, thank you.

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The post Attorneys balance use of powerful AI tools with risks — including legal hallucinations – The Mercury News appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

The 14-page motion looked like any standard court filing in a civil lawsuit. Filed in April in San Diego Superior Court, attorneys defending a local company were making a routine request for a judge to authorize additional expert witnesses in a vehicle collision injury case.

But on the sixth page of the motion, the attorneys cited legal authority from a case that does not exist — it was hallucinated by artificial intelligence.

RELATED: Stanford AI expert’s credibility shattered by fake, AI-created sources: judge

A San Diego judge wrote in October that she was “deeply troubled” by the conduct of the company’s civil defense attorneys. She found they had filed multiple documents containing AI hallucinations, including citations to non-existent cases, fake quotes from real cases and inaccurate citations to real but irrelevant legal authorities.

That is one of at least two known San Diego cases that are part of a troubling trend of attorneys abusing or misusing AI, especially generative AI, a powerful technology that can at times fabricate information with no basis in reality.

But even as legal watchdog groups have documented hundreds of AI hallucination cases in the U.S. and around the world, legal experts and attorneys say those cases are rare, arguing that AI is an important tool being put to good use throughout the legal profession, helping lawyers research case law, analyze evidence, draft contracts and complete any number of rote tasks.

“We can’t just ignore generative AI, we have to become experts in the use so that we can avoid issues … where hallucinated case law gets into final documents,” Bryan McWhorter, a patent attorney and partner at the firm Knobbe Martens, said in an interview. “But I think when leveraged correctly, generative AI is frankly a power tool. It’s going to allow me to produce higher-quality work product in less time and deliver that value to clients.”

RELATED: California issues historic fine over lawyer’s ChatGPT fabrications

McWhorter recently argued that AI cannot now and likely never will be able to replace human legal analysis. That’s a view shared by James Cooper, a professor at California Western School of Law in downtown San Diego and co-author of the book “A Short & Happy Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Lawyers.”

“It complements all our skill sets,” Cooper said. “(But) there still needs to be a human in the loop.”

Cooper said there will always be subtlety in fact-finding and questioning people “that robots don’t understand … AI tools can’t fully engage with the nuance of humankind.”

Even so, Cooper is concerned that the use of AI in the legal field may be advancing too rapidly, and he hopes attorneys and firms are implementing safeguards that lawmakers and regulators have not.

“We’re at a juncture now where the technology is far outpacing our ability to regulate it, both as a legal profession but also in the real world, in a non-legal context,” Cooper said. “… We don’t know yet where to put the guardrails.”

‘Risks are no different’

As the use of AI has exploded in recent years, legal organizations have grappled with what sort of guidelines and policies to put in place to ensure that attorneys who use the technology do so ethically and responsibly. That can look different for a patent lawyer such as McWhorter and attorneys who litigate criminal and civil cases before judges, though the basic principles are largely the same.

“Broadly speaking, (the) risks are no different than we’ve always had in the industry, which is we must produce work that is 100% accurate and maintains all of our ethical obligations regarding client confidentiality,” McWhorter said.

For courtroom litigators, a federal judge in New York helped set the standard for the use of the technology in June 2023 while presiding over a case in which attorneys filed documents containing AI hallucinations. He wrote that there is “nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance,” but also noted that existing rules required that attorneys ensure the accuracy of every filing.

RELATED: Chatbot dreams generate AI nightmares for Bay Area lawyers

That has been the theme of most court opinions and bar association guidelines issued since then.

“Simply stated, no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations — whether provided by generative AI or any other source — that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified,” wrote a panel of judges from California’s Second Appellate District.

The judges said the September opinion was the first by a California court to address “the generation of fake legal authority by AI sources” and should double as a warning for all attorneys in the state.

The American Bar Association and California State Bar have issued similar guidelines that AI cannot replace the judgment of trained lawyers and that attorneys should not become overly reliant on the technology.

Cooper, McWhorter and organizations such as the ABA all agree that there is a long list of legitimate uses of AI technology in the law. Much of it is geared toward helping summarize and analyze large data sets, while other tools can help be a middle step in crafting writing.

“The best analogy is we are creating the bones of the strategy, generative AI is adding the first-pass flesh onto those bones and then we’re going back and sculpting it into the final creation,” McWhorter said. “It’s really an intermediary in the process; it’s neither a beginning nor an end.”

‘Erodes trust in the legal profession’

Thus far, the most obvious and visible risk that has emerged in the use of AI in legal work is that of hallucinations. Several watchdog groups have been tracking cases in which court filings have contained AI hallucinations.

While the databases show that many such instances involve pro se litigants, or non-attorneys representing themselves, hundreds of licensed attorneys have also been sanctioned, reprimanded or otherwise caught submitting filings containing AI hallucinations, according to one such database compiled by attorney and researcher Damien Charlotin. His database only tracks cases in which a court has explicitly found or implied that a party relied on hallucinated content.

Charlotin’s database includes three cases in which U.S. judges were found to have written orders or opinions containing AI hallucinations. Meanwhile, the New York Times recently reported that a district attorney in Northern California has been accused of filing briefs containing mistakes typical of AI, one of the first known cases involving suspicions of prosecutorial misuse of the technology.

So far in San Diego, there are two known cases involving court documents containing AI hallucinations.

On Oct. 2, a panel of judges from the California Court of Appeals’ 4th Appellate District sanctioned longtime San Diego criminal defense attorney George Siddell, finding that he violated the Rules of Professional Conduct. They ordered him to pay $1,500 as part of the sanction.

A member of the California State Bar since 1971, Siddell admitted to filing a motion in a client’s criminal appeal that contained a citation to a case that doesn’t exist, a fake quote from a real case and two citations to cases that did not address the issues for which they were cited, according to a published appellate opinion. Siddell declined to comment for this story.

The judges wrote that Siddell’s conduct, when compared to similar conduct by attorneys in civil matters, was “particularly disturbing because it involves the rights of a criminal defendant, who is entitled to due process … and representation by competent counsel.”

The next day, San Diego Superior Court Judge Carolyn Caietti ruled that two attorneys from Tyson & Mendes, a national firm headquartered in San Diego, had filed multiple documents containing AI hallucinations in the case defending the local company in the auto injury lawsuit.

A Tyson & Mendes partner wrote in a declaration prior to the ruling that he took responsibility for the mistakes, though he blamed the errors on a younger associate attorney who he said “neglected to confirm the accuracy of certain case citations.”

In her own declaration, the associate attorney took responsibility and wrote that she was fired from the firm “as a direct result of my actions and conduct in this case.”

In a statement provided by Tyson & Mendes, the firm said in part: “As the Court in this case noted, we accept responsibility for our obligation to present the highest quality work product to the Court. We affirm this responsibility, even and especially in the face of technological transformation.”

The firm also added a lengthy explanation about how it is endeavoring to be a leader in the use of AI in the legal industry.

“As the practice of law continues to evolve through new challenges, opportunities, and technologies, we must also continue to hold ourselves accountable through introspection and transparency,” the firm said in its statement. “Tyson & Mendes remains steadfast in our commitment to our clients, our industry, and our profession to leverage the transformative power of AI and new technologies with keen professional and ethical judgment, ongoing education, and agility.”

Caietti did not ultimately sanction either attorney, though her decision was based on procedural issues rather than their conduct.

“Notwithstanding the denial on procedural grounds, the Court is deeply troubled by the conduct of Defense counsel,” Caietti wrote. “… All of this conduct is contrary to the rules of professional responsibility and is the type of conduct that erodes trust in the legal profession … This is hopefully an experience that will never be repeated by the attorneys involved in this matter, let alone others in the profession.”

Client confidentiality

Since AI learns from the data fed to it by its users, attorneys must also take care that confidential client information is not used to train AI models and that it does not inadvertently become public.

For patent attorneys such as McWhorter, those risks revolve around business interests and market competition. Other areas of the law — Cooper mentioned due process and evidentiary issues, as examples — could implicate constitutional rights and protections.

Cooper said that unless and until there are stronger regulations, it will be up to each attorney and law firm to understand the AI technology they use and mitigate any potential risks and harms.

‘Effectively and ethically’

Newer attorneys especially run the risk of becoming over-reliant on AI tools without first building a foundational knowledge of how to practice the law, Cooper said.

At California Western School of Law, the use of AI is a balancing act. The faculty is navigating how best to ensure that students don’t abuse AI technology in their coursework while also teaching them how practicing attorneys are using it.

“We’re trying to make sure that we prepare our students to be able to enter the workforce, enter the profession, and use it effectively and ethically,” said Liam Vavasour, vice dean for academic affairs.

Vavasour said students are not allowed to use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for writing assignments unless given explicit permission to do so, and even then the use is typically limited to idea-generation or editing and must be disclosed.

Vavasour said that from his understanding, practicing attorneys and judges are using AI in a variety of ways, “so we’re trying to make sure that our students know how to use it effectively and some of the pitfalls to avoid.”

McWhorter supervises younger associates at his firm and believes fears about them being over-reliant on AI are overblown.

“Because the value of generative AI is not in legal strategy, (young attorneys) will develop the ability to provide legal strategy the same as anyone else,” McWhorter said.

Source link


Attorneys and law firms can elevate their online presence with professionally written content from SEO Content Writing Services monthly plan. Our team of experienced writers specializes in crafting blog posts, articles, and written content that accurately reflect the expertise and knowledge of our clients in the legal field. With a keen eye for detail and a thorough understanding of legal terminology, we provide high-quality writing that helps our clients stand out from their competition and engage with their target audience. Trust SEO Content Writing Services for one time article writing or monthly written content to handle all of your written content needs and showcase your law firm's expertise.
If you need written content, blog posts, or articles professionally written for your website, we can help. Go HERE to find out more.
or email us here: myseowritingservices@gmail.com
To find out more about our article writing or blog post services, fill out the form, thank you.

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First

Last

Business Name

Email *

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The post Attorneys balance use of powerful AI tools with risks — including legal hallucinations – The Mercury News appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A woman who was molested for years by her stepfather has been awarded $2.28 billion by a California jury in a lawsuit that also implicated her mother and the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which both parents were active, her attorneys announced.

The panel in Riverside County Superior Court awarded damages Tuesday to a woman described in court papers only as Jane Doe, who said she was sexually assaulted by her stepfather from age 5 until she was 14, according to an announcement by the law firm of Gary A. Dordick.

The lawsuit alleged that beginning in the 1980s, the stepfather sexually abused the girl. The assaults took place at their Lake Elsinore home and at events, meetings, and property of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the lawsuit said.

“These ongoing acts of abuse brought Plaintiff to the brink of suicide,” according to the lawsuit.

In addition to the stepfather, the negligence and sexual abuse suit also named the church and the woman’s mother. It alleged that the woman repeatedly told church officials, including local bishops, about the sexual abuse but that they failed to report it to law enforcement in violation of church policy and also used “intimidation and shaming tactics” to keep her from telling anyone outside the church.

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The AP is not naming the stepfather nor the mother to shield the identity of the victim. An email to the stepfather’s attorney seeking comment wasn’t returned.

The stepfather was arrested in 1997 after Jane Doe told her high school basketball coach about the abuse, the suit said. He pleaded guilty to committing lewd acts with a child under age 14 and spent three years in state prison, according to the lawsuit.

While denying wrongdoing, the church settled its part of the lawsuit for $1 million in December, and the woman’s mother settled for $200,000 in February, according to the woman’s lawyers.

The stepfather failed to appear at trial on the first day of jury selection and withdrew his answer to the lawsuit rather than face a warrant for his arrest, and “accordingly, his attorney was not able to participate in the trial,” the law firm said in an email.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The post $2.3B Awarded in Sex Abuse Lawsuit That Named Mormon Church appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

Attorneys general in 25 states filed an amicus brief Thursday in opposition to California’s ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Led by Montana attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, the attorneys pushed to uphold a San Diego judge’s decision to block the ban from taking effect.

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“The district court properly concluded that California’s law unconstitutionally restricts the fundamental right to keep and bear common firearm magazines typically possessed for lawful purposes,” Knudsen and the other attorneys general wrote.

Last month, a coalition of over a dozen attorneys general signed onto an amicus brief supporting the ban in California. New York attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and 19 others argued the ban is a constitutionally permissible restriction and should be able to take effect.

“Large-capacity magazines make weapons even more deadly and can lead to horrific mass-casualty events,” James said. “These dangerous accessories are intended to ensure the maximum number of bullets can be fired without the shooter needing to take time to reload. The pain, suffering, and loss of life that can be inflicted by a single shooter utilizing large-capacity magazines is horrific, which is why these dangerous accessories have no place in our communities.”

California’s ban on high-capacity magazines, which was adopted through a 2016 proposition, has long been under legal battle. The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States before being sent back to the lower courts following its June 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego ruled in September that the state’s ban on ammunition magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. Benitez cited the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that requires restrictions to be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

California attorney General Rob Bonta appealed the ruling, and in October, the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit granted the state’s request to keep portions of the ban on large-capacity magazines in place.

However, later that month, Benitez once again ruled that the ban was unconstitutional, stating it had no historical precedent and violated people’s Second Amendment rights.

“In the United States, with its long tradition of gun ownership, there are no historical laws prohibiting simple possession of any type of firearm until long after the 1868 adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Benitez wrote in a 79-page decision on Oct. 19. “That is too late.

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“The State has identified no national tradition of firearm regulation so broad in its coverage or so far reaching in its effect as its extreme ‘assault weapon’ statutes,” Benitez added.

An appeals court has ruled that the state’s bans will remain in effect while Bonta appeals the lower court’s decision.

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The post Twenty-five state attorneys general join fight to block California’s gun magazine restrictions appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s attorney general will not seek criminal charges against a police officer who in 2020 fatally shot a man outside a pharmacy in the San Francisco Bay Area amid national protests over the police killing of George Floyd, his office announced Tuesday.

California attorney General Rob Bonta found there was not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jarrett Tonn, who was a detective with the Vallejo Police Department at the time of the shooting, did not act in self-defense or in defense of his partner officers.

“Sean Monterrosa’s life mattered and there is nothing that can make up for his death. His loss is and will continue to be felt by his family and the Bay Area community,” Bonta said in a statement.

“My office remains committed to doing everything in our power to prevent these kinds of incidents from occurring and putting forward policy solutions to help ensure law enforcement are responsive to the needs of their communities,” he added.

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Tonn fired a rifle five times through the windshield of his patrol pickup, hitting a kneeling Monterrosa once in the head. Police said they initially thought Monterrosa was carrying a handgun in his waistband. But they found a hammer in the pocket of a sweatshirt he was wearing.

The windshield of the patrol pickup truck, considered a key piece of evidence in the case, was destroyed, leading city officials to seek a criminal investigation into how that happened. Bonta took the case in 2021 after Solano County District attorney Krishna Abrams recused herself.

Bonta found there was no destruction of evidence by the Vallejo Police Department and said that the officers who replaced the windshield were not involved in the shooting.

“The officers did not act with a criminal intent to suppress or destroy evidence when they had the windshield replaced and returned the vehicle to service,” he said.

Michelle Monterrosa, Sean Monterrosa’s sister, said Tuesday she found Bonta’s decision frustrating and disappointing. “It’s just really disappointing that we see people put their political careers ahead of actually doing what they need to do to bring justice to our loved ones,” she said.

Tonn was terminated last year after an independent third-party investigation determined he violated several department policies, including using deadly force that was not objectively reasonable, failing to de-escalate the situation, and failing to activate his body-worn camera in a timely manner. Tonn’s termination was overturned this year after an arbitrator found the deadly force he used was legally justified. The detective was reinstated to his job in August.

The Vallejo Police Department has come under repeated criticism in other cases as well.

The month after Monterrosa’s killing, then-Police Chief Shawny Williams started an independent investigation after two people in the department said officers had their badges bent to mark on-duty killings.

The department has had several other controversial slayings by police, including that of Willie McCoy, 20, of Suisun City, in February 2019. McCoy was killed after he fell asleep with a gun in his lap in his car at a Taco Bell drive-thru. Six Vallejo officers fired 55 shots.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The post California’s Top Prosecutor Won’t Seek Charges in 2020 Fatal Police Shooting of Bay Area Man appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Few corners of the U.S. may be less hospitable to Donald Trump than California, where he lost by more than 5 million votes in the 2020 election. But as the former president seeks to return to the White House, the liberal bastion may give him an unlikely boost.

A state GOP rule change has opened the possibility that Trump could sweep each of the state’s 169 delegates on March 5, when California is among more than a dozen states participating in the so-called Super Tuesday contests. With Trump already leading his rivals in many state and national polls, a dominant performance in California could move him much closer to the GOP nomination.

“This race is quickly consolidating,” said GOP fundraiser Charles Moran, a Trump delegate in 2016 and 2020. With a win in California, he added, “I truly think Trump could take the nomination on Super Tuesday — then this is over.”

With less than four months before the Iowa caucuses officially kick off the GOP nomination process, the dynamics of the race could still change. But Trump is keeping a close eye on the state, where his most prominent Republican rivals will gather without him on Wednesday for the second presidential debate. While Trump is skipping the event, he has made sure to be in California on Friday to appear at the state’s GOP convention, where many of the people who will ultimately serve as delegates will be in attendance.

In what would be an ironic twist, the state where the former president is widely loathed outside his conservative base could help him tighten his grip on the Republican White House nomination.

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Trump, who is facing criminal charges in four separate cases, has long had a conflicted relationship with California, the nation’s most populous state, where Democrats haven’t lost a statewide election since 2006 and outnumber registered Republicans by about 2-to-1.

California was home to the so-called Trump resistance during his time in office, and Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. As president, he called the homeless crises in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other big cities disgraceful, and threatened to intercede — faulting the “liberal establishment” for what he described as a “terrible situation.”

He berated state Democrats who supported funding health care for some adults who entered the U.S. illegally, and challenged California’s authority to reduce car emissions. Then-state attorney General Xavier Becerra filed more than 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration, targeting initiatives on immigration, health care and the environment.

Still, the Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles sits on the Pacific coast south of the city. And even in losing California in a landslide in 2020, Trump received over 6 million votes — more than any Republican presidential candidate before him — with his margins topping 70% in some rural counties that typically favor conservative candidates.

California probably will be an afterthought in November 2024 — the state’s lopsided electorate makes it a virtual lock for Democrats on Election Day. You’d have to go back to 2000 to find a Republican nominee pushing hard to win California, when George W. Bush invested millions in the state then lost to Democrat Al Gore by 12 points.

Under the rule change, a Republican presidential candidate who pulls in more than 50% of the primary vote would be awarded all 169 delegates. If no candidate hits that threshold, delegates will be awarded proportionally.

Such a winner-take-all rule didn’t exist in recent presidential elections in the state. Previously, the California GOP primary amounted to dozens of separate races on a single day — one in each congressional district across the sprawling state, and then one statewide. The winner in each district collected three delegates; the candidate who received the largest number of votes statewide claimed a bonus of about a dozen more.

That created a competitive environment where Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi ’s district in San Francisco awarded the same number of GOP delegates as a rural, conservative heartland district.

When the change was adopted in late July, state party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson predicted it would lure GOP presidential candidates to California to campaign, drive turnout and make the state relevant in picking the party’s 2024 nominee.

But others believe it has had the opposite effect, stifling competition in a state where buying media advertising across half a dozen markets comes at a huge, prohibitive cost. The vastness of the state, home to nearly 1-in-8 Americans, makes it hard to get to all the regions. The previous guidelines encouraged candidates to target specific districts — now, one candidate can collect them all.

“The effect of the change has been to effectively terminate the Republican primary in California,” said conservative activist Jon Fleishman, a former executive director of the state GOP.

The state party — strongly influenced by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, a Trump loyalist — “shifted everything to help Donald Trump,” Fleishman said.

In a sign of the fallout, a super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Never Back Down, recently curtailed operations in California. The committee says it had knocked on over 100,000 doors over several months but has shifted its focus elsewhere.

“The Trump team came in to rig the rules in their favor,” Ken Cuccinelli, who was deputy secretary of Homeland Security during the Trump administration and founded the PAC, said in a statement.

Similar rule changes seen as benefiting the Trump campaign are playing out elsewhere, including in Michigan and Nevada, where some GOP leaders fear changing guidelines could confuse voters. The California rules are expected to be challenged at a state party convention next week, though reversing course is seen as unlikely.

“Nobody is seriously trying to repeal it,” said longtime conservative activist Steve Frank.

The home turf of Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, California was once reliably Republican in presidential elections. Pronounced demographic shifts, particularly a boom in the Hispanic population, and a shifting economy that included the collapse of the defense industry, changed everything.

The number of Hispanics, Blacks and Asian-Americans combined has outnumbered whites in California since 1998, and Latinos alone have outnumbered the white population for about a decade. Most new voters are Democrats or left-leaning independents. Democrats hold every statewide office and dominate the Legislature and the congressional delegation.

California’s Republican Party has been in decline for years, and GOP voters account for just 23.8% of the statewide total, slightly ahead of independents. Infighting between conservatives and moderates persists, and dueling factions are expected to brawl at the state party convention over a proposed rewrite of the party platform, moving it toward the political center.

The last Republican to win a presidential contest in California was George H.W. Bush, in 1988. Since then, it’s been a long string of Election Day misery: John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee against Barack Obama, boasted about competing in California but lost by 24 points. Mitt Romney suffered a 23-point loss to Obama in 2012. Trump lost there to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 30 points.

However, pockets of Republican strength remain, including in the vast Central Valley farm belt and the so-called Inland Empire running east and north of Los Angeles. Despite his penchant for California-bashing, Trump won 23 of the state’s 58 counties in the state in 2020, mostly in the state’s farm belt and rural interior.

Once the primary is over, California’s relevance may lie in a string of competitive House seats, including several in Orange County southeast of Los Angeles, which are expected to play into control of the closely divided chamber next year.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The post Donald Trump, Skipping GOP Debate, Eyes California Delegate Sweep in the State He Loves to Hate appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Justice Department has been scrutinizing a controversial artificial intelligence tool used by a Pittsburgh-area child protective services agency following concerns that it could result in discrimination against families with disabilities, The Associated Press has learned.

The interest from federal civil rights attorneys comes after an AP investigation revealed potential bias and transparency issues about the opaque algorithm that is designed to assess a family’s risk level when they are reported for child welfare concerns in Allegheny County.

Several civil rights complaints were filed in the fall about the Allegheny Family Screening Tool, which is used to help social workers decide which families to investigate, AP has learned.

Two sources said that attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division cited the AP investigation when urging them to submit formal complaints detailing their concerns about how the algorithm could harden bias against people with disabilities, including families with mental health issues.

A third person told AP that the same group of federal civil rights attorneys also spoke with them in November as part of a broad conversation about how algorithmic tools could potentially exacerbate disparities, including for people with disabilities. That conversation explored the design and construction of Allegheny’s influential algorithm, though the full scope of the Justice Department’s interest is unknown.

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All three sources spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity, saying the Justice Department asked them not to discuss the confidential conversations, and two said they also feared professional retaliation.

Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment.

Algorithms use pools of information to turn data points into predictions, whether that’s for online shopping, identifying crime hot spots or hiring workers. Many child welfare agencies in the U.S. are considering adopting such tools as part of their work with children and families.

Though there’s been widespread debate over the moral consequences of using artificial intelligence in child protective services, the Justice Department’s interest in the pioneering Allegheny algorithm marks a significant turn toward possible legal implications.

Supporters see algorithms as a promising way to make a strained child protective services system both more thorough and efficient, saying child welfare officials should use all tools at their disposal to make sure children aren’t maltreated. But critics worry that including data points collected largely from people who are poor can automate discrimination against families based on race, income, disabilities or other external characteristics.

Robin Frank, a veteran family law attorney in Pittsburgh and vocal critic of the Allegheny algorithm, said she also filed a complaint with the Justice Department in October on behalf of a client with an intellectual disability who is fighting to get his daughter back from foster care. The AP obtained a copy of the complaint, which raised concerns about how the Allegheny Family Screening Tool assesses a family’s risk.

“I think it’s important for people to be aware of what their rights are and to the extent that we don’t have a lot of information when there seemingly are valid questions about the algorithm, it’s important to have some oversight,” Frank said.

Mark Bertolet, spokesman for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, said by email that the agency had not heard from the Justice Department and declined interview requests.

“We are not aware of any concerns about the inclusion of these variables from research groups’ past evaluation or community feedback on the (Allegheny Family Screening Tool),” the county said, describing previous studies and outreach regarding the tool.

Allegheny County said its algorithm has used data points tied to disabilities in children, parents and other members of local households because they can help predict the risk that a child will be removed from their home after a maltreatment report. The county added that it has updated its algorithm several times and has sometimes removed disabilities-related data points.

The Allegheny Family Screening Tool was specifically designed to predict the risk that a child will be placed in foster care in the two years after the family is investigated. It has used a trove of detailed personal data collected from child welfare history, as well as birth, Medicaid, substance abuse, mental health, jail and probation records, among other government data sets. When the algorithm calculates a risk score of 1 to 20, the higher the number, the greater the risk. The risk score alone doesn’t determine what happens in the case.

The AP first revealed racial bias and transparency concerns in a story last April that focused on the Allegheny tool and how its statistical calculations help social workers decide which families should be investigated for neglect – a nuanced term that can include everything from inadequate housing to poor hygiene, but is a different category from physical or sexual abuse, which is investigated separately in Pennsylvania and is not subject to the algorithm.

A child welfare investigation can result in vulnerable families receiving more support and services, but it can also lead to the removal of children for foster care and ultimately, the termination of parental rights.

The county has said that hotline workers determine what happens with a family’s case and can always override the tool’s recommendations. It has also underscored that the tool is only applied to the beginning of a family’s potential involvement with the child welfare process. A different social worker who later conducts the investigations, as well as families and their attorneys, aren’t allowed to know the scores.

Allegheny’s algorithm, in use since 2016, has at times drawn from data related to Supplemental Security Income, a Social Security Administration program that provides monthly payments to adults and children with a disability; as well as diagnoses for mental, behavioral and neurodevelopmental disorders, including schizophrenia or mood disorders, AP found.

The county said that when the disabilities data is included, it “is predictive of the outcomes” and “it should come as no surprise that parents with disabilities … may also have a need for additional supports and services.” The county added that there are other risk assessment programs that use data about mental health and other conditions that may affect a parent’s ability to care for a child.

The AP obtained records showing hundreds of specific variables that are used to calculate the risk scores for families who are reported to child protective services, including the public data that powers the Allegheny algorithm and similar tools deployed in child welfare systems elsewhere in the U.S.

The AP’s analysis of Allegheny’s algorithm and those inspired by it in Los Angeles County, California, Douglas County, Colorado, and in Oregon reveals a range of controversial data points that have measured people with low incomes and other disadvantaged demographics, at times measuring families on race, zip code, disabilities and their use of public welfare benefits.

The Justice Department has shown a broad interest in investigating algorithms in recent years, said Christy Lopez, a Georgetown University law professor who previously led some of the Justice Department’s civil rights division litigation and investigations.

In a keynote about a year ago, Assistant attorney General Kristen Clarke warned that AI technologies had “serious implications for the rights of people with disabilities,” and her division more recently issued guidance to employers saying using AI tools in hiring could violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“They are doing their jobs as civil rights investigators to get to the bottom of what’s going on,” Lopez said of the Justice Department scrutiny of Allegheny’s tool. “It appears to me that this is a priority for the division, investigating the extent to which algorithms are perpetuating discriminatory practices.”

Traci LaLiberte, a University of Minnesota expert on child welfare and disabilities, said the Justice Department’s inquiry stood out to her, as federal authorities have largely deferred to local child welfare agencies.

“The Department of Justice is pretty far afield from child welfare,” LaLiberte said. “It really has to rise to the level of pretty significant concern to dedicate time and get involved.”

Emily Putnam-Hornstein and Rhema Vaithianathan, the two developers of Allegheny’s algorithm and other tools like it, deferred to Allegheny County’s answers about the algorithm’s inner workings. They said in an email that they were unaware of any Justice Department scrutiny relating to the algorithm.

Researchers and community members have long raised concerns that some of the data powering child welfare algorithms may heighten historical biases against marginalized people within children protective services. That includes parents with disabilities, a community that is a protected class under federal civil rights law.

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, which can include a wide spectrum of conditions, from diabetes, cancer and hearing loss to intellectual disabilities and mental and behavioral health diagnosis like ADHD, depression and schizophrenia.

LaLiberte has published research detailing how parents with disabilities are disproportionately affected by the child welfare system. She challenged the idea of using data points related to disabilities in any algorithm because, she said, that assesses characteristics people can’t change, rather than their behavior.

“If it isn’t part of the behavior, then having it in the (algorithm) biases it,” LaLiberte said.

Burke reported from San Francisco.

Follow Sally Ho and Garance Burke on Twitter at @_sallyho and @garanceburke. Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The post Child Welfare Algorithm Faces Justice Department Scrutiny appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

VISALIA, Calif. (AP) — Central California’s Tulare County will pay $32 million to settle a lawsuit alleging its child welfare agency failed to respond to reports of abuse involving an infant boy who was hospitalized for malnutrition and suffered brain damage, plaintiffs’ attorneys said Monday.

Under the terms of the settlement, the county must also implement policies and computer software that will enable Child Welfare Services to better track and follow up on allegations of child abuse, according to a statement by the law firm Panish Shea Boyle Ravipudi.

Tulare County officials and its attorneys did not immediately respond Monday to requests for comment on the settlement.

The deal was announced just weeks before trial was scheduled in the civil case filed last February on behalf of a child named in court papers as “J.G.”

The lawsuit alleged Child Welfare Services failed to investigate multiple reports starting in March 2020 claiming that J.G. suffered neglect and abuse while in the custody of his biological parents.

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At 10 months old, the boy was hospitalized and suffered “profound and permanent brain damage due to severe malnutrition,” according to the court filing.

The lawsuit accused the county, the child welfare agency and its employees of negligence. It sought unspecified monetary damages for “physical, mental and emotional pain and suffering.”

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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The post California County to Pay $32M in Child Welfare Settlement appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.