Judge blasts lawyer for using AI after he points to charges in ‘examination’ of Asylum appeal

Courage to migrate could face a disciplinary investigation after a judge ruled he used AI tools like chatgpt to prepare his legal research.

The Tribunal heard that the judge had been left confused when Choradhury Rahman presented his character, which included the accusations that he described as “completely” or “inappropriate”.

The judge found that Mr Rahman had also tried to “hide” this when questioned, and “wasted” the Tribunal’s time.

The incident occurred when Mr Rahman represented two Honduran sisters who sought asylum in the UK on the grounds that they had been targeted by the violent gang known as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).

After arriving at Heathrow Airport in June 2022, they claimed asylum and claimed during the interview that the gang wanted them to be “their women”.

They said that even then gang members had threatened to kill their families, and he had been looking for them since they left the country.

In November 2023, the home office rejected her asylum claim, saying her account was “inconsistent and not supported by documentary evidence”.

They referred the matter to the First Tribunal, but the request was dismissed by the judge who “did not accept that the appellants were victims of bad attention” on Ms. 13.

The case was then referred to the Upper Tribunal, with Mr Rahman acting as their cousin. During the hearing, he argued that the judge failed to consider credibility sufficiently, committed an error of law in the evaluation of documentary evidence, and failed to consider the impact of document migration.

However, these claims were equally rejected by Mark Blundell, who dismissed the complaint and ruled that “nothing was said by Mr Rahman either verbally or in writing.

However, in a postscript to the judgment, Judge Blundell referred to ‘significant issues’ that had arisen in the appeal, regarding Mr Rahman’s legal research.

Of the 12 authorities that have paid in this appeal, the judge found when he read that some were not available, and that others “did not hang the legal proposals that were put down”.

When he investigated this, he realized that Mr Rahman appeared “unknown” on legal search engines and “unable to guide the judge in the cases he mentioned.

Mr Rahman said he had used “various websites” to do his research, with the judge noting that one of the most recent cases was that chatgpt was inappropriately posted in another legal case.

Judge Blundell noted that, given Mr Rahman “had seen nothing” about any of the authorities he had cited, some of which were non-existent, misleading “.

“It is clearly possible, in my judgement, that Mr. Rahman used common artificial intelligence to create grounds for appeal in this case, and that he tried to hide that fact from me during the hearing,” said the Judge.

“He was summoned to the barrier of England and Wales, and it is impossible that he did not understand that all the authorities were referred to the reasons for the transfer of the things I have set out above.”

He concluded that he was now considering reporting Mr Rahman to the Bar Standards board.