Ontario: lawyer who relied on ChatGPT-invented case law in a factum was referred for criminal contempt and suspended for six months, legal press reports
An Ontario lawyer relied, at a 1 May 2025 Superior Court hearing in an estate and family-law matter, on a factum citing cases that do not exist or do not support the propositions cited. The judge ordered her to show cause why she should not be cited for contempt, then withdrew the order on 20 May 2025 after she said her staff had used ChatGPT without her knowledge. On 30 September 2025 she told the court that she alone had prepared the factum with ChatGPT and that her earlier account was untrue; the court referred the matter to Ontario’s Attorney General for criminal contempt proceedings in December 2025. In July 2026 the Law Society Tribunal suspended her licence for six months, finding she relied on AI-generated non-existent case law and lied about it. The account comes from legal-press and law-firm reports of the decisions; the criminal contempt case was still ongoing at the last report read.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 12/10/2026