A Big, Beautiful Hunk of Legal Bullshit

Thursday afternoon. Feels like the world’s holding its breath, waiting for the damn whistle to blow so it can stumble out into the smog and find a stiff drink. Me too. But first, duty calls. Gotta shovel this digital manure off the doorstep before it stinks up the whole joint. And boy, did the tech gods deliver a steaming pile today.

So, get this. Some old fella, Jerome Dewald, 74 years young and apparently brimming with the kind of bad ideas that only come after decades of… well, whatever the hell leads a man to think this is smart. He runs a startup – of course he does, everyone with a pulse and a half-baked notion runs a startup these days – claiming it’s “revolutionizing legal self-representation with AI.” Sounds like horseshit already, right? Hold onto your hats, and maybe your wallets.

Dewald’s got himself in some kind of employment dispute. Needs to make his case in court. Standard stuff. But instead of hiring a lawyer, or even showing up himself like a normal schmuck, Dewald decides to beam in… an AI avatar. Not just any avatar, mind you. According to Dewald himself, this digital mouthpiece was a “big, beautiful hunk of a guy” named Jim. Jim! Probably had a digital jawline you could cut glass with and eyes that promised binary bliss.

Picture the scene. New York courtroom. Stern-faced judges ready for legal arguments. And up on the screen pops… Ken doll’s lawyer cousin, generated by some company called Tavus. The avatar, Jim the Hunk, barely gets a word out before Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels slams on the brakes.

“Hold on,” she says. “Is that counsel for the case?”

You can almost hear the record scratch. Dewald, bless his delusional heart, pipes up: “I generated that. It’s not a real person.”

Chef’s kiss. Perfection. The sheer, unadulterated idiocy. It’s beautiful in its own terrible way. Like watching a drunk try to unlock his car with a fish.

Now, Dewald apparently told The Register he used the avatar because he has trouble speaking for extended periods. Fair enough, maybe. Old age, illness, happens to the best of us. But here’s the rub: he didn’t tell the court beforehand that his video submission starred a goddamn AI puppet. He just sprung Hunk Hogan, Esq. on them cold.

Justice Manzanet-Daniels was, shall we say, not amused. “It would have been nice to know that when you made your application. You did not tell me that, sir, I don’t appreciate being misled,” she snapped back. And then the hammer blow: “You are not going to use this courtroom as a launch for your business.”

Boom. Sanity prevails, for a moment anyway. A judge actually calling out the bullshit instead of just nodding along like it’s the next big thing. Refreshing. Like finding a full bottle you forgot you hid.

This whole fiasco is just the latest boil on the festering ass of AI trying to elbow its way into places it doesn’t belong. Remember those lawyers last year who got slapped down for citing completely made-up cases generated by ChatGPT? They filed briefs full of legal precedents that existed only in the silicon dreams of some chatbot. It’s like asking a Magic 8-Ball for legal advice and then carving its answers onto stone tablets to show the judge. Utter madness.

And don’t forget DoNotPay, the self-proclaimed “robot lawyer” outfit. They got fined a hefty sum because they were yapping about how their AI was just as good as a real human lawyer, without a shred of proof. Shocking, I know. A tech company exaggerating its capabilities? Never!

It all stinks of the same cheap perfume: hype, hustle, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what humans actually do. These guys think you can just replace complex human interaction, judgment, and, yes, even the greasy song-and-dance of a courtroom, with some clever code and a handsome avatar.

Why a “big, beautiful hunk,” anyway? What was the angle there? Was Dewald hoping the judge had a thing for square jaws and vacant digital stares? Did he think a virtual pretty boy would distract from the flaws in his argument? It’s vanity layered on top of stupidity. If you’re going to pull a stunt like this, why not generate an avatar of Abe Lincoln? Or Clarence Darrow? Or hell, even Judge Judy? At least there’d be some thematic resonance. But no, he went for generic beefcake. It tells you everything you need to know about the level of thought involved. Probably picked the first stock avatar that didn’t look like a cartoon frog.

You’re not just replacing a speaker; you’re trying to replace presence, accountability, the whole messy, unpredictable human element. A lawyer, even a bad one, is a person. They stand there, they sweat, they make eye contact (or avoid it). They can be questioned, challenged, cross-examined. Their voice can tremble. They might have a coffee stain on their tie. They’re real.

What are you going to do with Avatar Jim? Cross-examine his algorithms? Ask him about his childhood? See if he flinches when you call him a liar? He’s just pixels. He’s a glorified PowerPoint presentation with better hair. The judge saw right through it. You can’t bullshit a New York judge with a handsome JPEG. They’ve seen worse things crawl out from under rocks in the five boroughs.

And the sheer gall of trying to use a courtroom appearance as a launchpad for your AI startup… it takes a special kind of brass neck. It’s like trying to sell life insurance at a funeral. Read the room, pal. Or in this case, read the damn legal code. There are rules. Procedures. Reasons why things are done a certain way. They might be antiquated, slow, and designed by people who still think fax machines are cutting edge, but they exist to prevent exactly this kind of digital clown show.

This isn’t about Luddites resisting progress. I drink enough whiskey to appreciate technology that keeps the booze flowing and the lights dimly lit. This is about recognizing bullshit when it’s served up on a high-tech platter. This “revolutionizing legal self-representation” crap? It’s snake oil for the 21st century. Instead of a wagon and a slick tongue, they’ve got servers and stock avatars. Same grift, different tools.

They promise democratization, access to justice for the little guy. What they deliver is often half-baked software that makes things worse. Like trying to fix a leaky faucet with chewing gum. You just end up with a bigger mess and sticky fingers. Real legal problems need real solutions, real expertise, real humans – flawed as they are. You can’t just download justice from an app store.

Think about the implications if this had worked. Courtrooms filled with dueling avatars? Lawyers replaced by subscription services where you pick your digital representative based on looks or simulated gravitas? “Your Honor, my client pleads ’not guilty,’ and would like to offer the court a 10% discount on its premium avatar package.” It’s a farce. A goddamn circus.

We’re so desperate to automate everything, to smooth out the rough edges of human existence, that we forget those rough edges are often the point. The struggle, the uncertainty, the fumbling attempts at communication – that’s life. Law isn’t just about reciting statutes; it’s about persuasion, empathy (or lack thereof), strategy, reading people. Can an AI truly understand the nuances of human desperation, greed, love, and stupidity that fuel legal battles? Can it feel the weight of a verdict? Of course not. It’s code. It simulates, it doesn’t feel. It calculates, it doesn’t comprehend.

This Dewald fellow, he thought he was being clever, gaming the system with his digital hunk. Instead, he just revealed the hollowness at the heart of so much of this AI hype. It’s a shortcut that leads off a cliff. A way to avoid the hard work of actual human engagement.

Makes me tired just thinking about it. The endless parade of tech bros promising utopia while delivering digital distractions and new ways to screw things up. They talk about disruption like it’s always a good thing. Sometimes disruption just means breaking shit that was working okay, or at least working in a predictably human way. I’ll take a flawed human lawyer over a perfect-looking avatar any day. At least I know the human might need a drink as badly as I do when it’s all over. Avatar Jim probably just defragments himself.

The judge put her finger on it. It was misleading. Deceptive. An attempt to sneak something fake into a place built, however imperfectly, on the idea of finding truth. And that’s the real kicker here. In a world drowning in deepfakes, misinformation, and digital illusions, the courtroom is one of the last places where we’re supposed to be able to demand the real thing. Trying to replace a human participant with a slick graphic? That’s not just bad legal strategy; it’s an insult to the whole damn process.

Alright, the afternoon’s bleeding into evening. The bottle’s calling my name, promising honest oblivion, not digital deception. Time to answer.

Keep your wits about you, folks. The machines are getting smarter, but the people selling them aren’t always getting wiser.

Chinaski out. Pour me another.

Source: Judge berates AI entrepreneur for using a generated ’lawyer’ in court