A federal rule requiring lawyers to certify the accuracy of their filings is gaining new traction in bankruptcy courts, where judges are sanctioning attorneys for submitting documents with fake AI-generated citations.
Courts nationwide are increasingly cracking down on lawyers citing nonexistent cases in filings, often because attorneys misunderstood the technology or failed to verify the information. Although courts have been grappling with how to monitor AI use by legal professionals for years, few incidents have appeared in bankruptcy practice until recently.
Bankruptcy judges in Illinois and South Carolina sanctioned attorneys this summer for submitting filings with hallucinated citations, and an Alabama judge recently ordered a Georgia lawyer to explain why she shouldn’t face discipline over “misleading and fabricated citations.”
At least three US bankruptcy courts—the Southern District of New York, the Northern District of Texas, and the Western District of Oklahoma—have issued orders or rules on AI. Most other bankruptcy courts rely on “Rule 9011,” which requires attorneys to certify that filings are accurate.
Around 40 nonbankruptcy judges have issued AI-related standing or general orders, according to the Rails AI tracker, which practitioners say could cause inconsistency across cases nationwide.
This article was originally published by Bloomberg Law.
Photo illustration: Jonathan Hurtarte/Bloomberg Law; Photos: Getty Images
Angélica Serrano Román 
Leave a comment