It's not "a little time"
The Judge spent the time to do exactly this. Judges are busy. Their time is valuable. The lawyer used AI to make the judge do work. The lawyer was too lazy to do the verification work that they expected the judge to perform. This speaks to a profound level of disrespect.
I highly doubt the judge was tracking down citations or reading those cited cases herself to verify what was in them. They have law clerks for that. It doesn’t make it any less an egregious waste of the court’s time and resources, but I would be surprised if a district court judge is personally doing much, if any, of that sort of spadework.
Checking if a case exists or not is little time in the context of legal research.
Ok, now do this for every other mistake type mentioned in the article, and you've got yourself a case!
Perhaps not, but it is the time required to discharge their obligation under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (IANAL).
It’s “paralegal time” which is nearly free …
Courts are not allocated an unlimited budget for clerks.
Outside of the literal dollar cost, the opportunity cost here is further delays on the docket because the clerk was unable to do something else, and the court time that must now be spent dealing with the issue.
First, you're confusing time with money
Second, the mistakes weren't just incorrect citations any paralegal could check