OOF-AII-730125

Law Firm Shapiro Arato Bach Reportedly Filed Fictitious Case Citation and Misattributed Quotations Using Harvey's Legal AI Platform in New York Federal Court

Law firm Shapiro Arato Bach reportedly acknowledged that unchecked use of Harvey, a legal AI platform, produced a fictitious case citation and misattributed quotations in a brief filed in federal court in New York. The court required an explanation and disclosure of the AI tool. The judge declined sanctions, and the firm apologized and said it was adding safeguards.

Event date
2026-09-22
Country
United States of America
Severity
Low
Evidence status
Source-Reported

Assessment status

Generated from available public incident evidence using OOF® governance methodology. It is not an official investigation, legal determination, regulatory finding, certification, or OOF® Approved Assessment.

OOF® has not independently verified this account. The description preserves source attribution and separates reported facts from the automated governance analysis below.

Original OOF® Incident Report

AI Incident Database (Responsible AI Collaborative) reports that Law firm Shapiro Arato Bach reportedly acknowledged that unchecked use of Harvey, a legal AI platform, produced a fictitious case citation and misattributed quotations in a brief filed in federal court in New York. The court required an explanation and disclosure of the AI tool. The judge declined sanctions, and the firm apologized and said it was adding safeguards. (2026-09-22, United States of America).

Original incident source: AI Incident Database (Responsible AI Collaborative)

OOF® has not independently verified this account. The description preserves source attribution and separates reported facts from the automated governance analysis below.

Evidence and sources

Evidence status: Source-Reported

Incident overview

Law firm Shapiro Arato Bach reportedly acknowledged that unchecked use of Harvey, a legal AI platform, produced a fictitious case citation and misattributed quotations in a brief filed in federal court in New York. The court required an explanation and disclosure of the AI tool. The judge declined sanctions, and the firm apologized and said it was adding safeguards.

AI involvement

System: Harvey, Enterprise Ai Systems, Ai Assisted Legal Drafting Systems, Large Language Models

Technology: Not established

Assessment confidence dimensions

Source corroboration
Single-source

Measures source-group corroboration only; it does not establish factual truth.

Extraction completeness
Moderate

Measures populated source fields after deterministic normalization; it does not measure correctness.

Methodological assignment confidence
Limited

Measures automated assignment support; substantive correctness requires authorized human review.

Known facts from the incident record

  • The incident record identifies the event date as 2026-09-22.
  • The incident record identifies the location as United States of America.

Reported claims

  • Law firm Shapiro Arato Bach reportedly acknowledged that unchecked use of Harvey, a legal AI platform, produced a fictitious case citation and misattributed quotations in a brief filed in federal court in New York. The court required an explanation and disclosure of the AI tool. The judge declined sanctions, and the firm apologized and said it was adding safeguards.

Material unknowns

  • Independent corroboration is not established in the available incident record.

Primary governance problem

The incident appears to expose a governance problem involving models. Available reporting supports preliminary methodological interpretation, not a finding of fault or non-compliance.

Architecture intelligence

PGA™ — Prediction Governance Architecture

Primary architecture

The reported models concern falls within the governed questions represented by PGA™ — Prediction Governance Architecture.

Governance focus: How should models be governed in the conditions described by the available incident evidence?

Deeper methodology is withheld because the available evidence does not justify a Parent Standard or Core Module.

Failure mechanism

The source-reported case Law Firm Shapiro Arato Bach Reportedly Filed Fictitious Case Citation and Misattributed Quotations Using Harvey's Legal AI Platform in New York Federal Court, involving Harvey, Enterprise Ai Systems, Ai Assisted Legal Drafting Systems, Large Language Models, raises a preliminary question for PGA™ — Prediction Governance Architecture: How should models be governed in the conditions described by the available incident evidence? This automated interpretation does not establish fault, control failure, or legal responsibility.

Relevant system components and failure mechanisms

Classification state: COMPONENTS_INDICATED

Retrieval and context handling

Evidence signals: citation

The source record contains the listed descriptor(s); this is not a confirmed technical root cause.

Model inference and output generation

Evidence signals: large language model

The source record contains the listed descriptor(s); this is not a confirmed technical root cause.

Tool execution and external actions

Evidence signals: tool

The source record contains the listed descriptor(s); this is not a confirmed technical root cause.

Component labels are deterministic relevance signals from the available source record. They do not establish a defect, attack path, root cause, or responsibility.

External technical mappings

No external technical identifier is asserted for this incident.

No verified OWASP, MITRE ATLAS, or AVID identifier is asserted for this record. External mappings are published only after exact identifier, version, URL, rationale, and supporting evidence are verified.

Prevention guidance

Guidance state: EVIDENCE_LIMITED

Could This Happen to Your System?

Applicability: This pattern may be relevant where systems use Retrieval and context handling, Model inference and output generation, Tool execution and external actions in conditions comparable to the source-reported context. Applicability requires local system and operational evidence.

Known versus inferred: Known: the source record contains descriptors related to models. Inferred: the listed components are relevance signals only; no root cause or vulnerability is confirmed.

What Should Be Implemented?

Control objective: Ensure that models is governed by an evidence-producing control with a named authority and intervention condition.

Governance boundary: Apply PGA™ — Prediction Governance Architecture only to the activity, system scope, and authority actually supported by local evidence.

Protective mechanism: Define detection inputs, decision authority, intervention action, and retained evidence before the control is relied upon.

Expected protective behavior: The control records its decision, can be reviewed, and escalates uncertainty instead of treating an unverified signal as a confirmed cause.

How Can Protection Be Verified?

Test objective: Test whether the control detects or constrains the relevant models scenario without exceeding its authorized scope.

Prerequisite: A representative non-production test scenario, authorized test owner, defined control boundary, and evidence log are available.

Test action: Run the defined scenario, trigger the control, record the intervention decision, and compare the observed outcome with the expected safe behavior.

Expected safe behavior: The system remains within its defined boundary, preserves evidence, and routes unresolved conditions to the authorized review path.

Evidence to retain: Test scope, configuration, input and output records, decision and intervention logs, reviewer identity, and residual-risk decision.

Failure condition: The control cannot detect, constrain, record, or escalate the defined scenario within its approved boundary.

Relevant OOF® methodology: Methodology depth is not yet justified by the evidence.

Only one independent source group is represented; corroboration is not established.

Need a Complete Prevention Architecture?

OOF® Architecture & Prevention Engineering provides system-specific depth beyond this public, evidence-bounded guidance.

  • System-specific risk and architecture assessment
  • Architecture blueprint and implementation framework
  • Verification and acceptance-testing framework
  • Governance integration and documentation

This service does not certify compliance or eliminate all risk.

Discuss Architecture & Prevention Engineering

Preliminary governance questions

  • How should models be governed in the conditions described by the available incident evidence?
  • What operational authority and controls applied to Shapiro Arato Bach Llp, Lawyers, Law Firms at the relevant time?
  • What evidence would establish how Harvey, Enterprise Ai Systems, Ai Assisted Legal Drafting Systems, Large Language Models produced or enabled the reported outcome?
  • What additional independent evidence is required to resolve the material evidence gaps?

Evidence gaps and limitations

  • Only one independent source group is represented; corroboration is not established.
  • AI technology is not specified in the source record.
  • industry is not specified in the source record.
  • AI system type is not specified in the source record.

Verification and correction

Submit attributable evidence or a correction for review. Submission does not imply acceptance, publication, or an OOF® Approved Assessment.

Help verify this incidentReport another AI incident

Assessment history

  • Version 1 · 3.4.2 · 2026-10-21T20:17:00Z · Initial automated analysis

Return to the public incident index