Bob (Robert) Cringely Has Just Explained That After 3 Years of Hard Work It Became Apparent LLM Slop is Unfit for Purpose in Courts
Last year: The EPO, Europe's Largest Patent Office, Admits Outsourcing to Microsoft Slop
Added moments ago to Daily Links (for morning time) was the first blog post from Cringely in 3 years (sans his announcement that he was returning). "I owe you all an explanation of where I have been," he wrote. "The story starts in 2022 when ChatGPT came out and everyone decided to get rich. I know I did. So, I bullied my dear friend – a legendary lawyer – into building a legal writing tool. Within a week we knew our mission was close to impossible because of failures in GenAI. There were imperfect products we could have sold but didn’t – dooming ourselves instead to a three-year product cycle to defeat the nightmare called LLM hallucinations."
We already have an issue in the UK because some horrible law firms are infesting the court system with slop. See for example (February 2026):
- Another New Low for Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA): Authorising Slop Disguised as "Legal Advice"
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) on Slop and Breach of Confidentiality
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Contradicting Itself: You Can Use Slop to Cheat Clients, But You Can Also Face Disciplinary Actions Over Slop
It ought to be another major scandal for the SRA. The SLAPP industry does not interest the SRA; it facilitates it by inaction, even when there are computer-generated filings [1, 2] (we got over 85 KG of legal papers sent our way). █
Image source: Q and A WITH BOB CRINGELY