By Jason Cruz
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
A lawsuit filed by a Bay Area man and his son who did not get into multiple universities is getting attention based on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to file the lawsuit. Nan Zhong, on behalf of his son, Stanley, filed lawsuits against the University of California, the University of Washington (UW), Cornell University, and the University of Michigan because his son did not get into the schools.
Zhong claims in the lawsuit that his son’s test scores and academic credentials should have put him into the schools and the institutions were discriminating against him because he is Asian American. Specifically with the UW case, Zhong applied to get into the highly competitive Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering (Allen School) but did not gain admittance.
Zhong has attorneys representing him in the lawsuits, except up until last month, the one against the UW. He estimates that he’s spent over $200,000 on legal fees to challenge the process for selecting students to college. As for the Washington state case, Zhong states that they interviewed “nearly 100 lawyers” but not one would take his case. He also talked to legal advocacy groups that offered no legal representation.
While Zhong has represented himself since the UW lawsuit was initially filed, the Pacific Legal Foundation filed a Notice of Appearance last month on the family’s behalf in the Washington state case.
Zhong’s son was an 18-year-old high school student with a 4.4 GPA and a 1590 (out of 1600) on the SAT when he applied to colleges. Yet, 16 out of 18 universities he applied to rejected him. He was accepted into the University of Maryland and University of Texas.
Notably, even though he was accepted into two colleges, he did not attend either schools. Instead, he was hired as a software engineer at Google.
The UW filed a motion to dismiss Zhong’s lawsuit. Zhong stated that he used AI to respond to the university’s motion. “Our response to [the University of Washington’s] motion to dismiss is around 28 pages, and AI probably did it in about five minutes with, of course, a few revisions after that.” Despite embracing AI, Zhong mentioned a need to balance it with an experienced attorney. He noted that AI does not help an individual know if they asked the right questions or the right legal objections.
The Court in the UW lawsuit denied in part, the motion to dismiss. There still remain portions of the lawsuit to litigate. At this point, the two sides are entering the fact-finding stage of the case.
UW spokesperson Victor Balta told the Northwest Asian Weekly, “We’re pleased that the court dismissed many of the claims and two of the three plaintiffs [Zhong filed on behalf of himself, his son Stanley, and younger son who is in high school]. Admission to the Allen School is highly competitive and the vast majority of out-of-state applicants are not admitted because, as Washington’s flagship university, we prioritize Washington residents for admission.”
Despite the ease of use and efficiency, the use of AI is concerning. “It’s become trendy to add AI stuff into whatever you are doing,” stated UW Professor Chirag Shah. “I think people have seen the recent developments because they are consumer facing.” However, Professor Shah cautioned there are issues in AI, especially in the area of generative AI. This is a branch of AI that creates new content. “It predicts the next token, which is the mostly likely scenario that follows,” explained Shah. “Unlike traditional systems where we program things, [generative AI] is self-learning and self-discovery,” he added, “[a]t some point, it doesn’t have control which is problematic.”
In a legal context, when using AI, there are “Legal AI Hallucinations” which generate fabricated case citations, false procedural information, or unsupported legal rules that look completely authentic. A deeper dive into the use of Legal AI reflects that even specific legal research tools powered by AI still produce inaccurate or misgrounded outputs.
Zhong stated that he “would run a Google check on every citation” when filing legal documents with the court. “The other thing we do is that we use multiple AI models. So if one AI model is hallucinating something, it’s extremely unlikely for the other AI model to also hallucinate the same thing because [of] the random process.”
“In actual legal complex cases, information gathering is not the end, it’s the beginning,” said Shah of the use of generative AI in the law. Shah believes that guardrails and safety nets should be implemented when using AI. He also believes that user education is necessary.
The Washington State Bar Association issued an ethics advisory opinion on the use of AI in legal filings. The opinion, which guides the legal community on how to address challenging emerging issues in the law gave a broad interpretation of AI to include “machine-based” AI, “generative” AI, rising forms of AI “such as agentic AI that function as an agent for the user,” “Artificial intelligence-enabled tools and “new standalone products” such as “apps.”
The opinion mentions the need for lawyers to act “competently,” which equates to “a baseline of understanding of, and reasonable proficiency in, the technology at hand.” It goes on to state that a lawyer must remain diligent in its handling of cases. “In other words, to the extent an AI tool promises to make handling a task more efficient, a lawyer must still use it with the requisite technical competence.” This includes ensuring that citations are accurate and correct and not “fictitious” as is an ongoing problem with the use of AI.
Similarly, the American Bar Association issued ethics guidance on AI tools which included an attorney’s duty to maintain confidentiality of its clients, as well as the continued diligence in ensuring that generative AI tools which may “self-learn” do not produce fabricated legal content.
There are few cases involving non-attorneys getting in legal trouble for their use of AI. However, at least two Washington state cases have involved people representing themselves in court and using AI in their legal findings. In both cases, the filings included fabricated citations and/or quotes.
Jason can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.
Leave a Reply