Judges Admit AI Mistakes & NBA Gambling Scandal

output of AI generated legal documents? And now another question, how can judges fail to vet AI generated orders before they go out from their chambers. In a response to an inquiry from Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, two federal judges, one in New Jersey and the other in Mississippi, have admitted that members of their staff used artificial intelligence to help prepare orders that Grassy said were ever ridden. Joining me is former federal judge Paul Grimm. He's the director

of the Bolt Judicial Institute at Duke Law School. Are clerks and interns are they using AI? And doing research and drafting opinions. Is that sort of the norm.

particularly during exams. And I think that probably the needles moved to the point where the law schools recognize that this demographic, these young people, they're using this in all their aspects of their lives, and to try to expect them not to use it in the practice of law, especially when law firms have invested heavily in the use of generative AI in their own business and practices, is

a futile thing. And so I think what the law schools are trying to do now are teach the students the proper use of it and are trying to teach them, you know, the dues and don'ts of how it should

be used. And I think that as for the intern, I think it was in the District of New Jersey that use of AI was inconsistent with the judge's own internal policy and chambers and also inconsistent with what the law school policy was for use of this, So I think that while there's no way of knowing whether it's most students coming out of law school now, I think probably it is the overwhelming majority are using this and probably are at schools where they're being taught the proper

way to use it. And it's clear that, you know, it's been over a year that the American Bar Association it's Ethics Committee released formal ethics opinion five one two, five twelve that deals with the ethical issues associated with the use of artificial intelligence in the practice of law. So that's over a year old, and the fact that the ethics people are already starting to tell people how you use it ethically is pretty clear indication that it's

being used broadly in law schools. And I think that the students realize that they're going to be expected to have this skill because the law firms are expecting it, and that's how they're going to survive and thrive in the law school environment. So I think that probably the answer is, yes, they're using it, and that will only increase.

AI by judges and chambers. That should be a national policy across the United States in all of this SCT courts, and that was issued on July thirty first of twenty twenty five. And in his response to Senator Grassley's letter asking for comments from the Federal Administraty Office of the US Course about any policies dealing with the use of the generals of AI and chambers, Judge Conrad, who is

the director of the AO, made reference to that. So there's even interim guidance, and I think that one of the things that is pretty clear from that guidance is that the judges are responsible with in their chambers to make sure that AI is not used for any core judicial functions such as decision making or adjudication, and strongly recommends independent verification before any generative AI is used for

any purpose. There are a number of purposes for which it probably safely can be used, and there's guidance on that.

The National Center for State Courts, which is a terrific organization that focuses on the state courts, and of course they are far more state court judges than there are federal judges, issued a seventeen page document on August seventh of twenty twenty four titled Artificial Intelligence Guidance for the Use of AI and Generative AI in the Courts, And again it goes through extensive definitions of what AI is, what kind of software applications, There are the ones that

are problematic, the ones that are more useful, how chambers

should operate. And similarly, this year, the Sedona Conference, which is a think tank that has been around for many years and is very influential in dealing with cutting edge technology issues as they apply in the law, issued a monograph in their journal called Navigating AI in the Judiciary that was co authored by three statehourt judges and two federal judges and a professor from Waterloo University that gives an eight pages some really good guidance to judges as

to how they should and shouldn't use it. So I think the key takeaway here is, you know, the genies have a bottle. The stuff is being used. There's a growing guidance in terms of how it can properly be

used and how it should probably not be used. And just like courts initially were sanctioning and cautioning lawyers who didn't use it correctly when they were citing JENAI created content without checking it, I think the judges themselves are learning that lesson that they're responsible crediting comes out of their chambers and they have to manage interns in law works and make sure that their procedures are complied with.

the US Courts. The answers were sent in response to questions by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley. I've been talking to former federal judge Paul Grimm, director of the Bolt Judicial Institute at Duke Law School. So you have interns, you have clerks. Does it depend on the judge how much a judge puts into let's say, an opinion. Do most judges at least read them over.

a scheduling order, it's automatic. You know that says you know, counselor will by such and such a date provide me with the following information and we'll have a scheduling call, but certainly no order coming out of a judges chamber that deals with a substantive ruling on a case or an evidentrary motion, you know, something that's going to decide

the merits. I don't think any judge would say that it's appropriate or a judge to issue in order that deals with the resolution of a substantive issue in a case without having read it and verifying to the satisfaction of that judge that it's legitimate. Now, some judges have different ways of doing it. What I would do is, once I had the initial conversation with them and they sent me a draft, I would ask them to attach to the draft a PDF copy of the cases that

they cited as this positive. Now, as you're aware, lots of times there are cases that are just sort of like a string site in five cases, and there's one at a recent Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court case that had the ruling and you're going to rely on it, I would have them attached a PDF copy of that and highlight for me in yellow highlighting the language that they were relying on for what they said, and so

I can independently check it. That way. By giving it to me that way, it's sped it up for me. I didn't have to go on West Law or Nexus and input it all and read it a lot of times. You know, there's a lot of part of the case, the initial part talking about the jurisdiction or the standard review. That's really not important to what the ruling is. But you want to look at the discussion on one particular

point of law. And by having the actual case and having the highlighted section, I then had at my fingertips what I needed to go through. Look at the opinion, look at the authority, decide whether I thought, you know, it was adequate for what was necessary, look at the parties briefing again, and verify that before it went out. But to your question, to you know, the caseloads of an average federal judge probably runs between a low of two hundred to three hundred cases to a high of

a thousand cases. And it depends upon what kind of an order it is and how busy the court is. And you know, no matter how hard the judges working or what kind of safe cards they have in their chambers, it's possible for things to slip through the cracks and when it deals with new technology that people are perhaps

not as familiar with. There's going to be a learning curve at the start, but I think the I think the cast out of the bag now that the learning curve time is over and you need to start using it, you've got guidance that tells you how to do it. I am quite sure. I'm quite sure that Judge Robin Rosenberg, who is the director of the Federal Judicial Center, which is the legal education arm for the Federal judiciary, she's

a fantastic judge. And I am quite sure that the Baby Judge schools, the judge training programs that they have every year for new judges and for judges, magestate judges, bankruptcy judges, district judges, and circuit judges. I am sure that there will be a segment on the proper use of AI there because Judge Rosenberg will want to make sure that the judges have the most recent guidance and are aware of the pros and the pitch balls.

for them by AI. There's some law and technology people computer scientists who have raised the specter of a problem that can occur when you've got these large language model programs like generative AI, is that you know, one of the things that you worry about with AI is biased, and it could be intentional bias, or it can be

inadvertent bias. But when you use a generative AI tool and you put sort of a narrative inquiry, you know, what are the key defenses to an any trust case to the legs the following things in the second circuit

of the United States courts. And you ask a question like that and it comes out and gives you a list, and you follow up with a series of follow on questions, which is sort of a natural progression that the algorithm senses what you're interested in, senses what you're looking to do, and starts to provide you with answers, even if they're based upon legitimate legal sources, consistent with what it into its your desired outcome is. And that's a real problem

because you know, I'm a dinosaur. When I started doing legal research, you know, we had digests. There were no computers. You would go to like contracts and you'd look through this digest. It was like an old fashionist cyclopedia and you'd be looking, you know, and you say, it's this

close to the problem I have. And then you would go to a real book and you'd open it up, you read the case, and then when you got a case, you had a whole series of processes to make sure the case was had not been overruled or modified, called shepherdization. And what you did was in reading and kind of

going triangulating to all these different things. You might say, well, you know, I thought it was contract, but it's really warranty, which is sort of a sub issue of contract, but it has its own set of rules, and you kind of would learn through this trial and error that this intuitive approach to what the answer was, and sometimes it would be from a different field that you had initially thought it might be from you miss all that when you don't have that kind of give and take thinking

about it, I can remember sitting in the law library with like fifty books open, you know, all surrounding me, you know, looking at something to try and figure out what my particular case really needed to have to be the solution for the position that I was taking. And

I think there's worry that you lose that now. Some people would tell you, though, June, that if the parties, one thing you can do one accepted use of AI, if it's done properly, is you can feed into the artificial intelligence generator of AI search program the briefs of the party and ask the particular tool if any of the cases cited by the parties our host nations are not proper And you can also say did they miss any controlling cases in this jurisdiction that deal with this

subject matter? And so it may be possible that AI will allow the judge to sort of check to see whether or not the lawyer's joint use of it has been siloed to where they missed some authority that the

judge really thinks needs to be reflected upon. But I think that right now, people who talk about the appropriate use of AI worry that that sort of initial creative and analytical process, the thought process that law schools have championed for decades as to critical thinking skills that lawyers have to have, that they may become a sort of atrophy and a little bit less well used if people rely upon AI too much to the exclusion of the

old skills that are that are learned. Now. We heard some of those same kind of problems about the use of computers back in the day. I remember lawyers saying that, well, you could never use computers in litigation. You could use it in wills and the states because you're using basically forms the same forms over again, but you'll never use it in litigation. I think that people would split their size open laughing at that notion today, because computers are

used in every aspect of law. So you know, we're at the beginning of this. And keep in mind, you know, AI has been around since the nineteen fifties, right in one form or another, but generative AI because of technological advances.

No one was talking about generative AI. I know this because I used to write opinions as a judge and scholarship as an adjunct professor and a professor of Duke about evidentiary issues associated with technical evidence, and no one was talking about generative AI until about twenty twenty two when the whole chat GPTV came out. So this is still relatively recent. And what's confounding is how explosive the use is become in such a short period of time.

for example, the NBA player involved, Terry Rogier. There are certain bets that an individual can places, you know, whether a team wins or loses, the score goes over a certain amount of points, or there's something called individual prop bets where betters can make bets on whether a certain individual is going to score more or less than a certain number of points, get a certain amount of rebounds, certain amount of assists, whatever statistical categories they put out there.

And in this instance, it's been alleged that mister Rogier purportedly told individuals that he was going to leave a game early, you know, before he reached a certain amount of points, rebounds, sist, and that if the individuals bet the under on that, then you know, they would obviously win their bets. So it's alleged that he passed along that information and then that other people took that information, distribute that information to others, and distributed information to others

to make bets on them. And I think it's important to note in those types of situations that each league, whether it's the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, national hockey, league.

At some point they issue like an injury report, and that injury report will let people know who's playing, who's not playing, who may be playing, probable, questionable things of that nature, and that information is released, so ultimately the book makers can put odds out there that are, you know, the equivalent to who's playing, who's not And so what

was happening mister Rosier's situation. You know that information was allegedly being disclosed to others prior to any type of injury report or not even making it on your injury report. Inside information think about like in a stock tip, right, Like you might know about a company going public before it's supposedly out there, and then then you use that inside information to benefit to yourself. The other involved an illegal poker game in a sense that it was a

cheated card game. It was through the use of technology from what I read, whether it's like technology within the table that the players were using, technology within the cars that they were using. Essentially that it was a rigged poker game. And where the high profile bendit, mister Chauncey Billips,

who was the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers. It's being alleged that he was kind of used to lure individuals to that game, to lure like an unsuspecting victim to that game, because think about it, that person might say, oh, Wow, I'm gonna play poker with Chauncey Billups. Well, I don't believe mister Billips has been accused of, you know, cheating

the individual a lot of money. What it's been alleged is at those poker games, it was a rigged poker game and then ultimately some person loses a lot of money and then that money is distributed among the co conspirators and the individuals that ran that game.

in the NBA. The co conspirator, it can surmised to be it's Chauncey Billups and the reason that is related to the indictment with mister Rogier. It's alleged that the individuals and I don't even think mister Rogier, but the other co defendants in that indictment receive specific information about certain individuals on the Portland Trailblazers that weren't going to play that night prior to any release to the public.

That's who Chuncey Billibs was coaching at the time. So while mister Bilbs has not been charged in connection with the call it the betting scandal, the NBA betting scandal, it is potentially he's listed as a co conspirator. But to your question, no, I think these were more released on the same day due to the high profile nature

of the cases. But I don't really see a link between the two because one is about an illegal poker game, the others about other individuals using inside information to make bets.

hundred thousand dollars just for providing that information. And so then it you know, you can surmise that if that individual is getting paid one hundred thousand, I'm sure that there were multiple wagers made by multiple people because it's all information. Like if you're one of the people at the top of the pyramid, if you had this information, you're going to tell your web of betters to make these bets. So I would imagine that the money gain

from that was in the hundreds of thousands. If they're paying this one person allegedly one hundred grand just for that info.

in most of the fifty states. I know, it's legalized throughout the country, but in most of the states it's now legalized. So these companies essentially got in bed with these gambling companies to form sponsorships, you know, collaborations whatnot. I agree with you that it might be a drop in the bucket, but if you think about it, it's about the integrity of the game, right, Like you can't have players taking themselves out voluntarily for the purpose of

getting a bet. You can't have individuals, you know, using inside information to divulge that prior to the betting public gets it because it does it does call into the integrity of the game, and it does call into in question the actual results of those games.

can you prove that I provided this information? In Rogier's case, how can you prove that I didn't have a legitimate foot injury and I voluntarily took myself out of that game because in fact, I did not want to damage my career further. You know, these athletes, their bodies are their temple, right, they're their money makers, and you know, you can't necessarily fault an individual for taking himself out of a game with a legitimate injury that could ultimately

affect his future earnings. You know, when it comes to play on the court.

they were forthcoming. And it's my guess is he's probably a little upset that he said to the FBI, hey, listen, we're here if anything comes up, you know, I represent mister Rosier, please come to me before you do anything. And then next thing you know, he's getting a call that his client has to do a purp walk. You know, I think Rogier was at a hotel the morning he got arrested. So I think that's where the lawyer's ire comes from, because I've done this myself, where you reach

out to law enforcement. You tell them, hey, you are represented by counsel, or this individual is represented by counsel, and if something comes up, let me know. I'll bring them in. We don't got to do this. Song and dance will make it a lot easier. I think that's that's where his eyre is coming from.

because the federal government, the FBI there, they're powerful. It's a powerful agency, right and you know they're probably not going to come after you unless they think they have something. But I would think if my client's just a subject,

he's not necessarily a target. I'm not necessarily overly concerned about him getting arrested, specifically, once I've already notified the FBI that hey, call me, let me know if something's going to come up, because that you know, we'll take care of it from there.

The people involved are allegedly you know, distributing it amongst themselves. They're laundering that money. Further, it's my understanding that when the individuals didn't pay up, then there was you know, threats of force, maybe even actual physical force, used. So that's why I think the FBI is getting involved in this. Like you said, you're runn of the mill poker game.

But when you have an MBA star, you have you know, hundreds of thousands, maybe if not millions of dollars at stake, and then you have alleged mob tized and then also allegations of people using force to collect on those debts. That's where they come into play.

a strong or is not a strong case. I will say two things about BEF though. Number One, the Feds have a high conviction rate. I'm not saying every federal defendant gets convicted, but I would imagine that the Feds aren't going to come after someone unless they have a lot of evidence, you know, in their back pockets. Certainly one of this kind of you know, public nature, right, a lot of media, you know, a lot of press

around it. And the second part though, to whether it's a strong case or not, it's always going to hinge on the credibility of the witnesses. I would imagine that some of the individuals that have been providing animation from the government might be cedy. Individuals might not have the best track record. So if I'm a defense attorney, I'm

going to go full bore attacking that witness's credibility. Say, you know, how can we believe person A when they've done this, that, and the third throughout the course of their life. So I think defense probably have a strong case, but you can't really tell that from the indictment, and that still has to play out in court.

I don't want to just use you know, mister Combs as an example, any high profile defendant. You know, OJ Simpson still got plenty of public support, right, you know, and so that is going to play into it. And I think the defense is going to you know, this

is mister Billbs, hall of fame, career head coach. Why would he be risking all that on just you know, a poker game, maybe a poker game he participated in, but unwittingly as far as you know, it being a rigged game, or others being you know, losing on purpose. You know, same with mister Rogier.

I think it goes to two reasons. And I don't know, you know, I'm not saying I have any rhyme or reason to believe this, all right, But one, you know, a lot of the times, at least in mister Rogier's case, it is a led that he provided this information to an individual he grew up with, that he had known since childhood, right, And I think that goes to sometimes these individuals, no matter how much money, power and respect that they have, sometimes there's individuals that you grew up

with that you can't you know, I'm not saying you should cut them out of their circle, but if they're there for nefarious purposes, you know, sometimes you can get entangled in that, right And I'm not saying that's the case with mister Rosier. It could be one of his best buddies, that's a great person, you just never know, But I think that's one you get entangled with these individuals that are up to no good. The other part is, and I can't say, people might have an addiction, right,

and this gambling addiction could get out of hand. Regardless of how much money they make. And I'm not saying that's the case, because I don't think it's alleged that Rosier even you know, shared in any of these profits. It's just that he provided this information. So I think it goes it could be a gambling addiction, or it could just be you know, individuals, whether they grew up with them or not, they're just individuals that aren't looking

out for their best interests. That's ultimately how you could lose that much more. You know, you could risk so much when you make multi millions of dollars.

that may lead to other information coming out. Not saying it will, but I think it's more likely than not that if there is another quote quote scandal, this is just the beginning of it, right, and this is just going to start to come out, and you might see it come out in other league NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball, things of that nature.

weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg