There’s no question that AI is here to stay. While the technology isn’t new (think GPS), its rise in the last 5 years has been unprecedented. Today it’s hard to go a single day without either using artificial intelligence or learning about a new advancement or a new industry that it’s overhauling.
While there are, of course, significant benefits to the power of AI, there are a number of risks as well. The internet has become a staple of daily life, but most internet-savvy researchers know to take everything they read online with a grain of salt. You can’t trust everything you read on the internet, right?
AI can be deceiving. It essentially compiles and synthesizes information that exists on the internet, which means that it takes both good and bad data, but cannot distinguish between the two. The greater challenge? We’re now starting to see it make things up out of the blue and these fictitious outcomes present a real risk where the law is involved.
Recent Headlines
In 2023, two lawyers in New York made headlines for all the wrong reasons. They had submitted a legal brief to the Court, which had been drafted by a junior lawyer but vetted and approved for submission by very senior and experienced lawyers at the firm.
The problem was that the brief was created using Chat GPT and cited numerous cases that did not exist, which meant that the lawyers had effectively lied to the Court to support their arguments. Lawyers make arguments based on asking judges to follow similar reasoning in previous similar cases, and if those cases did not exist, that raises a significant flag.
Recently In Quebec
In a recent Quebec case, Specter Aviation Ltd. c. Laprade, 2025 QCCS 3521 (decision reported in French), a Defendant, Jean Laprade, was fined $5,000 by the Court for improper use of AI. The case itself involved a business deal that had been made overseas several years ago regarding an airplane, yet in his Statement of Defence he included several non-existent court cases and citations. Similar to the above-referenced New York case, this is seen as lying to the Courts, something judges don’t take lightly.
In a report from CTV News, the Court called Mr. Laprade’s conduct “highly reprehensible,” and said that “he must bear alone all the opprobrium resulting from quotations ‘hallucinated’ by artificial intelligence on which he relied…” Mr. Laprade acknowledged that his work may not have been perfect, but stated that he could not have defended himself without the use of AI.
The Court acknowledged that AI is here to stay, and that it can be a benefit to access to justice issues. However, that does not mean that a party is not responsible for the documents that they submit to the Court. In this case, the Court reasoned that, at its most innocent, Mr. Laprade wasted the time of several individuals and the court itself; however, at its worst, it can be viewed as intentional deception.
The Everyday Danger
AI is only going to become more prominent in the legal sphere, but there are two key dangers Canadians need to be aware of before they press forward.
The first problem, one that has existed since the dawn of the internet, is the presence of bad or incomplete information. Whether you’re googling your divorce questions or plugging numbers into an online severance calculator, you’re only getting one side of the story. Those tools rarely account for critical factors, such as the duty to mitigate (your obligation to seek comparable work), how bonuses or commissions are treated, benefit continuation, contract enforceability, or special circumstances that can raise or lower entitlements. As search engines increasingly rely on AI to “summarize” answers, the synthesized result can sound confident while still being incorrect.
Often AI will pull in sources from other jurisdictions, where the law does not apply. Your employment case may look very different in the US or even in Alberta than it would in Ontario, but AI does not recognize the differences. These answers also do not take into account your specific circumstances, which can significantly alter your outcomes in court. In so many cases, your results will vary based on your particular circumstances, which is why lawyers ask the questions that AI simply won’t.
The other danger is these AI hallucinations. AI does not always know what it doesn’t know, and if there are holes in the information, it seems to be ‘filling in the gaps.’ That’s led to false cases, false information, or even merging two pieces of information together into an entirely new piece of data that is not correct. The law is about careful analysis, not about making things up.
There are other concerns with AI, such as privacy, copyright, and plain old inaccuracy, but the real reason to consult a lawyer is expertise. Lawyers are trained to spot the issues you might miss (think limitation periods, enforceability of contracts, the duty to mitigate, and strategic risks) and to apply the right law to your specific facts. AI can generate information, but it can’t give you tailored, privileged advice or judgment. When you need legal advice, call a lawyer. We are only a phone call or email away. Contact our office today to set up a consultation.