The American Bar Association said generative artificial intelligence is eroding legal procedures, documentary records and evidence courts rely on, and called for attention after releasing a report this month that details how AI has permeated the legal system. The body, which sets ethical standards for the profession and oversees accreditation of roughly 400,000 U.S. attorneys, said lawyers and judges increasingly use AI to save time, conduct research and draft filings.
The ABA highlighted one pressing challenge: lifelike deepfake media that can imitate imagery, audio and video evidence courts have relied on for decades. It said voice cloning and deepfake tools allow bad actors to create convincing media depicting judges, lawyers or witnesses doing or saying things they never did, and cited reporting this year from agencies and organizations warning deepfakes pose a significant, long-term national security threat.
Court systems have already reported problems, the ABA said, including lawyers submitting AI-generated legal briefs that cite hallucinated case law and ethical questions over presenting deepfaked testimony from deceased victims. Examples cited in the report include instances documented by state and national outlets such as AI-generated legal briefs and discussion of deepfaked testimony in criminal proceedings documented by deepfaked testimony from dead victims.
At the same time, the ABA report records positive views from lawyers who said generative AI, particularly large language models, can speed routine tasks such as contract analysis, litigation preparation, drafting first versions of documents and summarizing large datasets. The ABA task force is weighing guidance for professional use and examining how AI affects legal risk and liability.
The report noted the shift toward AI use comes as lawyers report higher workloads, stress, burnout and attrition. It cited a recent study from the Association of Corporate Counsel that called work-related stress and long hours “a pervasive crisis” for in-house legal professionals, with leaders and those in high-demand sectors affected most.
Senior judicial officials have also warned about digital campaigns that aim to undermine confidence in the courts. The ABA summary cited a year-end warning from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts that bad actors, including foreign governments, seek to compromise public trust through hacking, bot-driven disinformation and other digital campaigns. The ABA has convened a task force of judges and technologists to develop public guidance and address the problem of deepfakes as evidence.