Description: In South Africa, the legal team for Northbound Processing reportedly admits that non-existent case citations in an urgent licensing dispute with the South African Diamond and Precious Metals Regulator were purportedly produced by the Legal Genius AI tool. The Johannesburg High Court found the fake references undermined the credibility of Northbound's submissions and referred the lawyers' conduct to the Legal Practice Council for investigation.
Editor Notes: For two reported South African legal citation confabulation incidents, please refer to Incident 1138 (from March 2023) and Incident 1137 (from September 2024).
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Legal Genius developed an AI system deployed by Giles Barclay-Beuthin , Arnold Subel and A legal team representing Northbound Processing, which harmed Giles Barclay-Beuthin , Arnold Subel , A legal team representing Northbound Processing and Northbound Processing.
Alleged implicated AI system: Legal Genius
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1139
Report Count
4
Incident Date
2025-06-30
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
A local judge has ordered an investigation into the conduct of lawyers who used generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to present non-existent citations in court.
This, after in a Johannesburg High Court case, Northbound Processing brou…
Faced with non-existent legal citations in a matter before the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, an acting judge asked counsel responsible for it whether the citations constituted artificial intelligence (AI) "hallucinations," to which the …
At a glance
- South African courts have delivered another unequivocal warning to legal professionals: presenting AI-generated fictitious citations will result in mandatory referral to the Legal Practice Council, regardless of good intentions…
A South African junior advocate who relied on an artificial intelligence tool to draft court submissions has been referred to the Legal Practice Council for investigation after including fictitious case law in written arguments. The case, i…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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