01
The first strike-off for invented cases, and the defence that did not work.
A registered foreign lawyer defending himself before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal filed an AI-drafted answer containing incorrect quotations and citations. His reply to that charge was also AI-drafted and contained more. He argued he lacked the expertise to verify the output and that the High Court's ruling on AI misuse did not apply to him. The tribunal rejected both, found a breach of the rule that only properly arguable submissions may be put, and said it would have struck him off on that allegation alone. The SRA says it received 42 reports of potential AI misuse in the year to July 2026.
CaseFlow angle. Put the signatory's initials next to every authority on the list, and make the initial mean one thing: "I opened it." Not "I recognise the name." Not "the tool is usually right." A citation nobody opened is a citation nobody checked, and the tribunal has now said whose problem that is.
02
Ninety-four percent of lawyers use AI. Eighty-three percent worry about what it invents.
LexisNexis surveyed 543 UK legal professionals for its report "Scaling up: The AI-dependent lawyer". 94 percent now use AI for legal work, up from 61 percent a year earlier. 83 percent are concerned about inaccurate or fabricated output, up from 57 percent at the start of 2024. One in ten describe themselves as dependent on AI to do their job. Legal research is the most common use, which is precisely where invented authorities come from.
CaseFlow angle. List every AI tool your team actually uses, including the free ones on personal phones, and decide in writing which of them is allowed to touch a citation. Most of the 94 percent are using a general tool for legal research. Move that one job onto something that shows you the source, and leave the general tool for everything else.
03
The new models now come in two versions. You are sold the smaller one.
OpenAI began rolling out GPT-6 Astra on 3 September and said it meets the "Critical" cybersecurity threshold under its own preparedness framework. The version paying users get refuses advanced cyber tasks; the fuller one goes to vetted defenders through an application-only programme. Anthropic did the same the same week, releasing Claude Fable 5.1 to everyone and Claude Mythos 5.1, the same model with looser safeguards, to vetted users only. Astra was switched off by default in enterprise workspaces until an administrator turned it on, and the staged launch drew a public apology from OpenAI's chief executive.
CaseFlow angle. Find out who in your firm holds the administrator switch for new models in your AI tools, and agree a hold period, fourteen days is reasonable, before any new model touches a live matter. A model that arrives with an apology attached is not one to wire into a client file on day one.
04
The home of the open models has been bought by a chip company.
Nvidia signed a definitive agreement on 2 September to acquire Hugging Face for 12.93 billion dollars. Hugging Face hosts around three million models and half a million datasets, and is the default place the free, open-weight models are published and downloaded from, including the Granite family IBM gave away under Apache 2.0 on 25 August. Nvidia says the platform will stay open and multi-cloud. The deal is expected to close in the first half of next year. On 30 August this was a single-source rumour and did not make the cut. It is now filed with the SEC.
CaseFlow angle. Add one question to the next supplier review for any tool that runs on an open-weight model: what happens to your product if the place your model is hosted changes hands? Write the answer into the supplier record. "It will stay open" is a promise from the buyer, not a term in your contract.
05
Robotaxis are carrying passengers in London. A safety driver is still in the seat.
Uber and Wayve launched the UK's first robotaxi service on 3 September: 15 Ford Mustang Mach-E cars fitted with Wayve's self-driving technology, each with a licensed human safety driver who can take control or brake. Riders cannot request one; the option appears after a booking when a car is nearby. More than 100,000 people joined the waiting list. Edition 5 reported London licensing these cars as private hire vehicles. They are now on the road.
CaseFlow angle. Add one question to your first notification script: "Was the vehicle in self-driving mode at the time?" Record the answer verbatim, with the time. With a safety driver in the seat the legal driver is still a person, but that answer decides which insurer, which evidence request and which liability argument the file goes down, and it is far easier to capture on day one than to reconstruct at month six.