Ko v. Li

The timeline

• 1 May 2025At the hearing of a motion in an estates proceeding, counsel Jisuh Lee relies on cases in her factum and in oral submission. Myers J cannot find any reference to them online. Asked directly whether she had used ChatGPT to write the factum, she answers: “I did not.”
• 6 May 2025Show-cause order: why should she not be held in contempt of court. Reasons at Ko v. Li, 2025 ONSC 2766.
• 9 May 2025She writes to the court that she “made necessary inquiries with my staff and confirmed that the factum in question was, in part, drafted with the assistance of an AI-based tool (ChatGPT)”.
• 16 May 2025At the case conference she says she delegated the factum to a student, and learned of the AI use from her assistant.
• 20 May 2025Contempt purged, 2025 ONSC 2965. The court: “The expressions of accountability and regret, coupled with the withdrawal of the offending factum, purge any contempt of court that might have been found.”
• Jun 2025The Law Society of Ontario advises her it is investigating her conduct, and the investigator makes specific information and document requests.
• 30 Sep 2025She sends the court an unsolicited letter admitting the earlier account was false.
• 6 Oct 2025Fresh show-cause order for criminal contempt. Carriage referred to the Attorney General of Ontario.
• 2 Dec 2025Case conference. The Crown takes carriage. Amicus curiae appointed. Endorsement released 4 December 2025, 2025 ONSC 6785.

The confession, in her own words

“In truth, I prepared the factum in question solely and entirely by myself, without any involvement from staff or any other individual. I personally used ChatGPT to assist in drafting portions of the document … The misrepresentation in my May 9 letter, implying that staff were involved, was made out of fear of the potential consequences and sheer embarrassment at having to admit my solitary responsibility for this grave lapse in judgment.”

And the sentence the court emphasised in its own reasons: “misleading the Court, even unintentionally at first and then deliberately to mitigate my shame, erodes the integrity of the judicial process.”

Why the court started again rather than reopening

“Your admission of dishonesty in the contempt proceeding is a fresh act. The initial contempt proceeding concerned principally your failure to review the citations in your factum before delivering it and relying on fake cases in open court. The new disclosure raises issues of deception of the court in a contempt of court proceeding. The procedural context and the quality of the acts are very different.”

The four particulars she must answer are the untruthful statement in open court on 1 May; the misleading statement in the 9 May letter about inquiries of staff; the untruthful statements at the 16 May case conference about a student and an assistant; and the untruthful implication of her written oral statement that she had delegated the work.

What is at stake

• The chargeCriminal contempt in the face of the court. The act is conduct that seriously interferes with or obstructs the administration of justice, or causes a serious risk of it; the mental element is deliberate or intentional conduct, or indifference akin to recklessness.
• The ceilingBecause it is tried summarily without a jury, the maximum penalty must be less than five years’ imprisonment. The court noted Canadian Judicial Council guidance that imprisonment for a non-continuing contempt will rarely exceed a few days or months.
• The Crown’s caseThat filing the factum was itself criminal contempt, the failure to check amounting to “indifference akin to recklessness”, and that the untruthful narrative compounded it.
• In parallelThe Law Society investigation continues, now extending to her practice management. A party to the underlying litigation has foreshadowed a costs claim against her personally.

Her December brief records that she has attended AI-specific continuing legal education and written an office AI policy drawn from Law Society recommendations. The court appointed amicus in part to advise on “purging a contempt which has allegedly arisen from a prior attempt by the contemnor to purge a contempt”.

What it changes

Every other matter on this record prices the fabrication. Ko v. Li prices the explanation, and prices it in a currency no other case reaches. Read alongside Fletcher v. Experian, where evasion raised a fine, and Gamez, where immediate candour ended the matter, it completes the pattern: the citation error is a professional lapse, and the story told about it afterwards is what turns into jeopardy.

It is also the clearest illustration of why a reconstructed account is dangerous. She was asked what happened weeks after it happened, had no record, and reached for the version that felt survivable.

Sources

• Endorsement, 2025 ONSC 6785 (4 December 2025, PDF), read in full
• Earlier endorsement, 2025 ONSC 2965 (PDF)
• First show-cause reasons: Ko v. Li, 2025 ONSC 2766 (CanLII)
• Cited within: R v. DaFonte, 2016 ONCA 532; R. v. Cohn, 1984 CanLII 43 (ON CA); R. v. K. (B.), 1995 CanLII 45 (SCC); Canadian Judicial Council, Some Guidelines on the Use of Contempt Powers (2001)

Related

• The full sanctions record
• Hussein v. Canada, where concealment also drove the outcome
• Zhang v. Chen, the other leading Canadian decision
• Ontario’s AI practice directions

Checked 5 August 2026 against the court’s own endorsement. This matter is live and undecided. No finding of contempt has been made in the second proceeding, and nothing here should be read as one.

Common questions

What happened in Ko v. Li?

A lawyer put non-existent cases in a factum and relied on them in oral argument in an Ontario estates motion. Asked directly in court whether she had used ChatGPT, she said she had not. She later told the court her staff and a student had prepared the factum. In September 2025 she wrote to the court admitting that she had prepared it entirely herself using ChatGPT, and that her earlier account was untrue.

Is Ko v. Li a criminal case?

The second proceeding is criminal contempt of court. On 6 October 2025 the court referred carriage of it to the Attorney General of Ontario, and the Crown appeared on 2 December 2025 to take carriage. Summary criminal contempt carries a maximum penalty of a fine or imprisonment for a period of less than five years.

Did the lawyer purge the contempt?

The first one, yes. On 20 May 2025 the court held that her expressions of accountability and regret, coupled with the withdrawal of the offending factum, purged any contempt that might have been found. The second proceeding exists because the court later concluded that the account which purged it was untrue.

What is the Crown's position?

That filing and using the initial factum was itself criminal contempt, because the failure to check the citations amounted to indifference akin to recklessness, and that deliberately submitting an untruthful narrative to purge that contempt compounded the wrongdoing.

Is Ko v. Li finished?

No. As at the endorsement of 4 December 2025 the court had appointed amicus curiae, directed a further case conference by the end of January 2026, and left open both a finding of contempt and sentencing. A costs claim by another party against the lawyer was also foreshadowed.