Australian lawyer referred to regulator over Claude-made citations

In an Australian immigration case, a Western Australian lawyer's submissions cited four cases that did not exist. The immigration minister's legal team could not find them. In an affidavit, the lawyer said he had used Anthropic's Claude to find authorities and Microsoft Copilot to check the submissions. He admitted he had grown overconfident in AI tools and failed to verify the results, and he apologized to the court. On August 15, 2025, the judge ordered him to personally pay the government's costs of A$8,371.30. The judge also referred him to the Legal Practice Board of Western Australia, warning that a good case could be undermined by rank incompetence.