analysisAI HallucinationsAI in Courts
Ayinde and Al-Haroun: England's Divisional Court sets the rule on AI-fabricated citations
England's Divisional Court referred two lawyers to their regulators over AI-fabricated citations and warned its restraint on contempt is not a precedent.
In England and Wales, the High Court’s Divisional Court took two cases in which lawyers had put non-existent authorities before the court and used them to state, at the highest level so far, how the courts will respond. Ayinde v London Borough of Haringey and Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin), handed down on 6 June 2025 by a court comprising the President of the King’s Bench Division, Dame Victoria Sharp, and Johnson J, is the domestic counterpart to Mata v Avianca: the reference point English courts now cite when a lawyer relies on fabricated case law.
What happened
The two matters were joined because they raised the same problem. As the court put it:
“The referrals arise out of the actual or suspected use by lawyers of generative artificial intelligence tools to produce written legal arguments or witness statements which are not then checked, so that false information (typically a fake citation or quotation) is put before the court.”
In Ayinde, a judicial review brought by the Haringey Law Centre, the barrister Ms Sarah Forey advanced five authorities that did not exist, including a purported Court of Appeal decision. At first instance Ritchie J made a wasted costs order, requiring Ms Forey and the Law Centre each to pay £2,000, and referred the barrister to the Bar Standards Board and the solicitors to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. He then referred the matter to the Hamid judge.
In Al-Haroun, a claim connected to financing arrangements involving Qatar National Bank, a witness statement and accompanying submissions cited a series of authorities that could not be found. The solicitor on the record was referred to the SRA.
What the court decided
The court heard both under its Hamid jurisdiction — its “inherent power to regulate its own procedures and to enforce duties that lawyers owe to the court,” taken from R (Hamid) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWHC 3070 (Admin). It set out the full range of responses open to it:
“the court’s powers include public admonition of the lawyer, the imposition of a costs order, the imposition of a wasted costs order, striking out a case, referral to a regulator, the initiation of contempt proceedings, and referral to the police.”
On the facts, the court found the threshold for contempt capable of being met but decided not to start proceedings against Ms Forey. It gave five reasons, including unresolved factual questions, wider failures in her training and supervision that contempt proceedings against her alone could not address, and the fact that she was an extremely junior lawyer already referred to her regulator. It then added the sentence that gives the judgment its force:
“This court’s decision not to initiate contempt proceedings in respect of Ms Forey is not a precedent. Lawyers who do not comply with their professional obligations in this respect risk severe sanction.”
Why it matters
Harber had shown a tribunal dealing with a litigant in person. Ayinde is about lawyers, and it is the first time a senior English court set out the framework in general terms. Three things follow for any firm.
The regulators now hold the files. Referral to the BSB and SRA is the disposition the court reached for, which means the enforcement question moves from the courtroom to the professional bodies — and those outcomes become the next entries on this record.
The restraint is deliberately fragile. The court declined contempt on these facts and said in terms that the decision is not a precedent. A lawyer who reads the outcome as tolerance has misread it.
And the court signalled that it will look past the individual. Its reasons repeatedly pointed to training, supervision, and the systems around a junior lawyer — the governance layer that a firm, not a chatbot, is responsible for.