South Africa: Ai 'Hallucinations' Are Threatening the Administration of Justice in SA

15 July 2025
Daily Maverick (Johannesburg)
opinion By Michele Van Eck

There have already been three incidents in which non-existent cases have been used in court documents. The lawyers involved were required to explain how these fictitious cases came to be cited.

The legal profession stands at a crossroads. Our courts have been confronted with alarming incidents in which lawyers, often relying on artificial intelligence (AI) tools, refer to cases in court documents that simply do not exist.

These court proceedings reveal cracks in the justice system so serious that the use of such non-existent cases risks undermining public confidence in the legal profession and eroding the administration of justice itself.

This problem is not hypothetical -- it has already surfaced in our courts. There have been three incidents in which non-existent cases have been used in court documents, namely:

In all of these cases, the lawyers involved were required to explain how these fictitious cases came to be cited. What connects these incidents is not only the existence of fabricated legal citations, but also the growing reliance on AI tools that...

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