Judge Wang’s AI-log preservation order doesn’t just freeze evidence, it manufactures a surveillance archive. That’s the Carpenter Trap: when the State compels dossiers so detailed they demand a warrant. Judges turning civil discovery into government pre-surveillance.
If you practice law in 2025, assume a simple truth about public AI tools: somebody is watching. Or at least, recording. As Rockwell put it, “I always feel like somebody’s watching me.” That is the right inner monologue for Rule 1.6 in the age of ChatGPT.
“Would you use a tack hammer or a piledriver to build a birdhouse? Yes, both create an impact designed to drive metal through materials. Different AI models are similarly specialized. Using ChatGPT for legal research is like using that piledriver on the birdhouse—wrong tool, predictable disaster, Rule 1.1 violation.”
The brief cites Rick v. Morty Holdings LLC, a perfect case that supports their argument beautifully. One problem: it doesn’t actually exist. ChatGPT invented it because it fit the fact pattern perfectly, and the associate was recently having a conversation with the GPT about that episode where Rick turns himself into a pickle to avoid family therapy—which, ironically, is exactly what this firm needs after the sanctions hearing.
The opinion says lawyers should understand “to a reasonable degree” how AI works. That’s the kind of language that sounds sensible until you’re in a deposition trying to explain what “reasonable” meant. Most attorneys likely understand how Microsoft excel works “to a reasonable degree” but I’d bet lunch at Keens that a substantial majority of attorneys don’t know what a pivot table is, how to make one, or could even explain it to a “reasonable degree.”
Member, Scarinci Hollenbeck, LLC. Partnership and Business Litigation Attorney with Passion for the Nexus between Technology and Ethics in the Legal Profession.
