AI in Legal Research and Case Law Search Quiz

Answers and explanations appear as you take the quiz.

1. Why were the attorneys in Mata v. Avianca (2023) sanctioned?
   • They cited cases that ChatGPT had invented and stood by them when questioned
   • They used a Westlaw account without a valid license
   • They missed a filing deadline because an AI calendar tool failed
   • They pasted confidential client documents into a public chatbot
2. What does retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) do in a legal research tool?
   • It trains a new model from scratch on each firm's past briefs
   • It lets the model answer from memory without any database
   • It searches a curated database of real authorities first, then has the model answer from the retrieved passages
   • It replaces citators by predicting whether a case is still good law
3. Why can a general-purpose chatbot produce convincing citations to cases that do not exist?
   • It deliberately inserts fake cases to test users
   • It predicts plausible text by default instead of looking cases up in a database
   • It only has access to overruled cases
   • Court databases block chatbots, so it has to guess the case names
4. What does it mean when a legal AI answer is 'misgrounded'?
   • The cited case does not exist anywhere
   • The tool refused to answer the question
   • The answer came from a different country's law database
   • The cited authority is real but does not support the claim it is cited for
5. In hybrid retrieval, what is the keyword index (such as BM25) especially good at catching?
   • Passages that mean the same thing in completely different words
   • Exact terms of art, statute numbers and party names
   • Whether the judge who wrote the opinion is still on the bench
   • The emotional tone of a court's opinion
6. What role do citators such as KeyCite and Shepard's play in AI-assisted research?
   • They write first drafts of briefs
   • They convert cases into embeddings
   • They flag negative treatment such as reversal or overruling
   • They translate opinions into plain English
7. Which statement about retrieval-based legal AI tools is accurate?
   • Retrieval reduces fabricated citations, but tools can still misstate holdings or cite cases for points they do not support
   • Retrieval eliminates all hallucinations, so verification is unnecessary
   • Retrieval-based tools hallucinate more often than general chatbots
   • Retrieval tools only work for criminal law
8. Under professional rules, who is responsible for the accuracy of citations in a filed brief?
   • The AI vendor that supplied the tool
   • The court clerk who accepts the filing
   • Opposing counsel, who must spot any errors
   • The lawyer who signs the filing