Maryland Family Law Maryland family law opinions and commentary
- Bel Air lawyer Adam Hyman referred to Attorney Grievance Commission.
- Submitted divorce brief with AI-generated fake cases and misquotes.
- Court cited failure to verify citations and lack of competent representation.
- Case marks Maryland appellate courts’ first dealing with AI misuse in legal filings.
The Appellate Court of Maryland referred Bel Air lawyer Adam Hyman to the Attorney Grievance Commission after he was found to have cited fake cases in a brief generated with artificial intelligence.
Hyman, representing a woman in a divorce case, submitted a brief that his law clerk prepared using ChatGPT. Hyman asked the clerk — a law school graduate but not a licensed attorney — if she verified the citations, but he did not check them himself.
The brief was “replete with citation irregularities,” Maryland Appellate Judge Kathryn Graeff wrote in an Oct. 29 opinion, including citations to fake cases, misquoted passages and citations to cases that did not support the proposition for which they were cited.
Graeff addressed the use of AI before the substance of the appeal in the divorce case “as a warning to others and to determine the court’s appropriate response in this case.”
She wrote it was likely that Hyman violated several of the rules governing lawyers’ conduct. One of those rules, Graeff wrote, “mandates that attorneys bring or defend only meritorious issues.” Another requires attorneys to provide “competent representation to a client.” A third rule holds attorneys responsible for the conduct of their employees.
“Instead of adequately preparing himself regarding the law, counsel left this work, in part, to his law clerk, a non-lawyer, and then failed to verify the accuracy of the research,” the opinion states.
“In our view, this does not satisfy the requirement of competent representation. A competent attorney reads the legal authority cited in court pleadings to make sure that they stand for the proposition for which they are cited.”
Graeff wrote that this case was the first time either the Maryland Appellate Court or Supreme Court had addressed attorneys’ improper use of AI.
Graeff was joined in her opinion by Appellate Judge Kevin Arthur and retired Appellate Court Chief Judge Patrick Woodward, who was specially assigned.
Alfred Scanlan Jr., who represents Hyman, declined to comment, but confirmed that Hyman’s clerk is still working for him. Ralph Sapia, a previous lawyer for Hyman, is no longer representing him after being appointed to serve as a judge in the Baltimore County Circuit Court.
At a hearing in early October, Hyman accepted responsibility. He acknowledged that he did not have subscriptions to Westlaw or LexisNexis and often didn’t fully read the cases he cited.
“There isn’t an excuse,” he said at an Oct. 3 hearing. “I submitted something under my name that was inaccurate. That’s mortifying.”
But Graeff wrote that he hadn’t done enough to avoid a referral to the AGC. She denied his request to file a corrected version of the brief, writing that doing so would be unfair to the other party.
“He has taken steps to ensure that this situation does not occur again, and he clearly was not happy to be in Court to address the (order to show cause why he shouldn’t be sanctioned),” Graeff wrote.
“Nevertheless, it would be a stretch to say that he was remorseful for his failures and the extra work that he caused in this case. Indeed, when questioned at oral argument about the concern that he clearly did not read the cases before submitting his brief (because the fictitious cases did not exist), counsel did not appear to share that concern, stating that he typically did not read cases he cites, but instead, he relies on summaries found in treatises or on the internet.”
Maryland Bar Counsel Tom DeGonia, who leads the office that disciplines lawyers, declined to comment.
Earlier this year, the Maryland State Bar Association published guidance on the ethical use of generative AI by lawyers, emphasizing the obligation to provide competent representation, maintain client confidentiality, disclose the use of generative AI tools to clients and charge reasonable fees.
“Attorneys using GAI must review output to ensure that it is accurate, reliable and trustworthy, and the legal arguments are relevant to the particular legal issue at hand,” the guidance states.
This story was updated to clarify that Ralph Sapia is no longer representing Hyman, and to say that Hyman’s new lawyer, Alfred Scanlan Jr., declined to comment.
