Abhishek Kumar, a 41-year-old registered foreign lawyer, has been struck off the legal register by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal following a remarkable case of AI-generated misconduct.
Kumar was originally referred to the SDT after a 2024 criminal conviction at the Central Criminal Court, where he was found guilty of knowingly employing a vulnerable adult disqualified from working due to his immigration status, paying him “cash in hand.”
He was sentenced following that conviction to a 12-month community order and 150 hours of unpaid work, before facing the separate regulatory proceedings that would end his career.
Choosing to defend himself at the Tribunal against the regulatory fallout from his criminal conviction, Kumar submitted a written answer that had been drafted using artificial intelligence.
That AI-generated submission contained misleading quotations and references to non-existent cases, which the Solicitors Regulation Authority subsequently identified as false citations.
When the SRA raised concerns about the fabricated material, Kumar emailed to explain and apologise, but that email had also been drafted using AI and contained further false material.
Kumar accepted that his actions breached professional principles and that he had failed to uphold the administration of justice, expressing regret that his “technological negligence created a risk of bringing the profession into disrepute.”
He denied that his actions breached public trust and confidence in the profession, claiming he had no intention to mislead and simply did not have the expertise to verify the AI output.
The Tribunal dismissed his excuses entirely, ruling that the harm caused by his misconduct was high in relation to both the original immigration violation and the subsequent AI misuse.
The SDT made clear that Kumar would have been struck off independently for either the immigration offence or the AI misconduct alone, underlining the severity with which both matters were treated.
This case marks the first time the Tribunal has been required to formally address the issue of AI hallucinations, a problem that has been growing steadily across the legal profession.
In May, London-headquartered law firm Pinsent Masons was criticised by a High Court judge after a lawyer sent the court AI-generated letters containing false legal information, with the firm referring the matter to the SRA for investigation.
The legal watchdog issued a formal warning about AI after receiving 42 reports of AI misuse and fake court citations, reflecting the scale of the challenge facing regulators across professional services.
The Kumar case now stands as the most serious disciplinary outcome yet linked to AI hallucination in a UK legal proceeding, and is unlikely to be the last of its kind.