Zachariah Crabill, a lawyer in Colorado, was suspended and terminated for employing AI technology to draft a court motion, leading to inaccuracies in legal content presented in a civil court case.
In November 2023, Colorado lawyer Zachariah Crabill was suspended from the bar and terminated from his position at a Colorado Springs law firm after admitting to using artificial intelligence to file court cases. Specifically, Crabill utilized ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by OpenAI, to draft a motion in a civil court case.
Crabill was suspended for one year and one day, with 90 days to be served and the remainder stayed upon successful completion of a two-year probation period, subject to certain conditions. The incident began when Crabill, feeling overwhelmed with his workload, decided to use ChatGPT to prepare a motion to set aside judgment for a client. Despite generating seemingly accurate case law and citations, Crabill failed to verify the accuracy of the AI-generated content before filing the motion in May 2023.
The inaccuracies were discovered just before a court hearing, yet Crabill did not inform the court of the false citations nor withdraw the motion. Instead, he initially blamed a legal intern for the errors. He later filed an affidavit admitting his use of ChatGPT to draft the motion.
Following his suspension and termination, Crabill founded his own law firm, Av{AI}lable Legal Solutions, advocating for the use of AI to help lower-income populations access affordable legal services.
