Ontario’s first discipline decision on artificial intelligence in a court filing turns out to be a
decision about what a lawyer says when caught. Law Society of Ontario v Lee, 2026
ONLSTH 136.
On July 16, 2026, the Law Society Tribunal suspended a sole practitioner for six months and ordered
$10,000 in costs after she filed a motion factum drafted with ChatGPT. Three of the four authorities
she cited did not exist. The fourth was real but stood for the opposite of the proposition she
advanced.
That is the headline. It is not the holding worth remembering.
The Tribunal said plainly that using AI to help prepare a factum is not professional misconduct, and
that competent use of these tools will often benefit lawyers, clients, and the courts. The competence
failure lay in a single omission: nobody verified the authorities. On its own, that would not have
produced a six-month suspension. What produced it was everything that happened afterward.
The Sequence That Mattered
– May 1, 2025 — Justice Myers, unable to locate any of the four cases cited by the lawyer, asked
counsel directly whether she had used ChatGPT. She said she had not. Asked whether anyone in
her office had, she said she could not say.
– May 9, 2025 — In a letter to the court she wrote that she had made inquiries of her staff and
confirmed that an AI tool had been used. She had made no such discovery; she had used the tool
herself.
– May 16, 2025 — At a case conference she told the court a law student had prepared the factum
with ChatGPT without instruction, and that she had been shocked to learn of it. She had not he
had not employed an associate since 2020 or a law student since the summer of 2024.
– June to July 2025 — She repeated the staff-member account to the Law Society, then refused
a request for the staff member’s contact information. She admitted the truth only on July 30,
after being advised that s. 49.3(c) of the Law Society Act compelled her to answer.
– September 30, 2025 — She wrote to correct the record with the court, more than four
months after the first false answer, and only after the investigator asked what she intended to
do about it.
The Tribunal made findings under Rule 3.1-2 (competence), Rule 5.1-2(e) (knowingly deceiving a
tribunal), and Rule 2.1-1 (honour and integrity, covering both the court and the regulator). It
described the May 9 and May 16 statements as premeditated, because by then she had had time to
reflect and an opportunity to explain honestly what had occurred.
The line from Justice Myers’ endorsement that the panel adopted is the one that will be quoted for
years: it is the litigation lawyer’s most fundamental duty not to mislead the court.
Why Six Months, and Why Not Longer
The parties jointly proposed a six-month suspension. The panel reserved, disclosed that it was
considering a longer suspension, permission to resign, or revocation, and called for post-hearing
submissions on whether R v Anthony-Cook, 2016 SCC 43, even applied — the matter had proceeded
on a response to a request to admit rather than an agreed statement of facts, with the misconduct
admission arriving two business days before the hearing and the penalty joinder on the eve of it.
The tribunal concluded that it was bound. Deference to a joint submission does not depend on the
tidiness of the package or the timing of the agreement; the admissions had dispensed with witnesses
and materially shortened the hearing, which was benefit enough. A panel may ask about the
circumstances of a joint submission and the concessions exchanged, but it should not reopen the
negotiation itself.
On proportionality, the panel weighed thirty years at the bar without discipline, an altruistic pro
bono retainer continued after Legal Aid funding ended, genuine ignorance of how the technology
behaves, sole practice near the end of a career, accepted remorse, adverse press coverage and a
contempt proceeding still pending before the Attorney General.
Then it added a warning that every Ontario litigator should read. This was a novel case. Later
matters involving misrepresentations of this seriousness to the court or the Law Society may merit
a longer suspension, or revocation.
Five Practical Takeaways
1. Rule 4.06.1 is not boilerplate. The signed certification that counsel is satisfied of the
authenticity of every authority cited is a substantive undertaking. Treat it as a sign-off gate that
nobody passes until each case has been retrieved and each proposition checked against the
paragraph relied on.
2. A working hyperlink proves nothing. Two of the four links in this particular case resolved
to real but unrelated decisions. Pull every authority independently from CanLII, Westlaw, or
Lexis.
3. Citation checking is not enough — read the case. The one real and relevant authority
cited by the lawyer held the opposite of what the factum claimed. Only pinpoint citation
verification catches that.
4. Decide now what you say if you make an error. Challenged on an authority you cannot
vouch for, the safe answer is that: 1) you cannot confirm it on your feet, 2) you will verify and
report back, and 3) you will withdraw anything unsupported. Justice Myers dismissed the
contempt proceeding on the strength of accountability and withdrawal of the factum. Candour
was available, and it would have worked had candour been used.
5. Never attribute your own work to staff. Two deceptions of the court and the false
statement to the regulator all consisted of shifting responsibility to a subordinate. It was easily
disproved and, even if true, would have raised a supervision problem.
The profession’s tolerance for a competence failure is considerably greater than its tolerance for
the instinct to conceal one. While Lee is the first Ontario decision on AI in a court filing, it will
be cited far more often for what it says about the duty of candour.