A New Mexico defense attorney’s use of artificial intelligence in a murder appeal has landed him in trouble.
The state’s Supreme Court last week held attorney Stephen Aarons in direct contempt of court for submitting a brief with “false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses,” according to a court order filed Sept. 9.
The court referred Aarons to a disciplinary board, finding that he “demonstrated a lack of remorse and a lack of concern for his client,” said the order, cited in a report by Ars Technica.
Aarons admitted to the court that he did not verify the factual claims and legal authority in his AI-generated brief before filing it, and did not tell hi client about this failure or that his brief “contained multiple factual and legal misrepresentations,” the court order added.
During a hearing last month, the Ars Technica report said, Aarons said he used a version of ChatGPT powered by the OpenAI o3 model, which was released last year.
“I assumed that it generated a bulletproof summary of proceedings,” he said, adding he thought it would be accurate because of AI’s extensive use in the legal and medical worlds.
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According to Ars Technica, justices expressed disbelief that Aarons did not know that AI tools could produce false information.
Justice C. Shannon Bacon said she was “really struggling with” Aarons’ claim that he was not aware of the concept of AI hallucinations, noting the issue of lawyers relying on inaccurate artificial intelligence information is a daily “above-the-fold” news story.
“So either you buried your head in the sand — and that’s a choice to do that, an intentional choice to be uninformed — or you took a gamble, and neither of those are consistent with the code of conduct,” Bacon said.
The court’s ruling comes as the use of AI in the legal space continues to be debated. The Financial Times reported last week that law schools had begun banning the use of AI in their classrooms to make sure students are doing their own writing and thinking.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote in August about a report from FTI Consulting and Relativity, which found that generative AI adoption in corporate legal departments has almost doubled in the past year, with 87% now reporting use within their teams, up from 44% in 2025.
“Generative AI has become a fixture in the majority of legal departments,” said Sophie Ross, Global CEO of FTI Technology.
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