The Cost Of Using AI To Generate (Fake) Case Law

In Reddy v Saroya, 2025 ABCA 322 (Reddy), the issue of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in legal work made its first appearance before the Court of Appeal of Alberta.

The appeal in Reddy mainly concerned an order of civil contempt of Court that was issued by the Court of King's Bench of Alberta for a failure to provide responses to undertakings. However, another issue on appeal included that counsel for the appellant originally submitted a factum which included citations of several cases without links or copies of their text. No evidence or verification could be found that these cases even existed. Counsel for the appellant explained to the Court that he had hired a contractor to write his factum who had delivered the factum late, and he was therefore unable to properly verify the cases cited due to time constraints.