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Don’t ‘double down’ on errors, warns Barniville

The President of the High Court has urged new solicitors to admit any mistakes they may make and not attempt to cover them up. 

Mr Justice David Barniville was speaking at a parchment ceremony in Blackhall Place (3 July), where around 70 graduates were welcomed into the profession. 

“The solicitors who get into trouble are not those who make the mistakes, as we all do, but those who cover them up and try to conceal them,” he told the event.

AI tools 

The High Court President cited recent high-profile cases involving the use of AI as an area where lawyers had been in the spotlight for not owning up to and admitting their mistakes. 

He said that there were many examples from around the world over the last 18 months of lawyers using generative-AI tools that were not checked, leading to false information, such as fake cases or fake citations or quotations, being put before the court. 

Mr Justice Barniville cited the US personal-injury case Mata v Avianca, where two lawyers were fined for including fake AI-generated cases in their submission to a New York court. 

He also referred to a recent London High Court ruling that referred two lawyers to their regulators over the use of five fake, ‘hallucinated’ cases in a submission. The court was also asked to consider contempt proceedings against the two, though these did not go ahead. 

The problem for the lawyers in such cases, the High Court President stated, was the failure to admit errors at an early stage and, instead, “double down”. 

Convention ‘important development’ 

In his speech to the newly qualified solicitors, Mr Justice Barniville also urged them to appreciate the privileged conditions under which they worked, compared with lawyers and judges in other parts of the world. 

He described the recent Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer, a Council of Europe initiative that Ireland signed in May, as an important development in this area. 

As well as the parchments, four graduates also received prizes. There were three joint winners of the Law Society Professional Responsibility Prize (PPC 2023): 

• Catherine Feery (Cian O’Farrell),
• Gabriele Sumauskiene (Lynch Solicitors LLP), and
• Helena Fitzgerald (A&L Goodbody LLP). 

Frank Madden (Office of the DPP) was also awarded the Law Society Skills Prize (PPC 2023).