We are pleased to announce that Helena Chen and Alison Chang, partners at Chen & Chang, have published their latest article

We are pleased to announce that Helena Chen and Alison Chang, partners at Chen & Chang, have published their latest article, “Limits on the Use of AI by Arbitral Tribunals— the Standard Established by the Canadian Court in ARIHQ v. Santé Québec for Setting Aside an Arbitral Award,” in Arbitration Quarterly, No. 122, pp. 79–89 (August 2026).

In this piece, Helena and Alison provide an in-depth analysis of a landmark April 2026 judgment of the Superior Court of Québec that set aside an arbitral award. The Court elaborated that:

Submissions generated by AI must be subject to rigorous human review. Such verification may be carried out by means of cross-checking with reliable legal databases in order to confirm that the references and their content withstand careful scrutiny. A lawyer who submits AI-generated materials to a court but fails to carry out verifications shirks his or her responsibilities.

In this case, all of the doctrinal and jurisprudential references on which the Arbitrator relies are non-existent and “hallucinated.” The preponderant evidence therefore leads to the conclusion that “the Arbitrator’s authority was delegated and that he abdicated his role of reviewing the result.” Since the non-existent decisions are at the heart of the arbitrator’s reasoning, a party may reasonably think that a more thorough verification of the decisions would have prompted the arbitrator to reconsider his position. Such breach is capable of affecting the parties’ confidence in the result rendered and in the arbitration regime generally. Accordingly, the Court set aside the arbitral award.