Today is this blog's 18th birthday!! and I wonder if it might be the longest continuously running professional responsibility blog out there. All the other blogs I used to keep up with from back then do not exist anymore. It is hard work to keep a blog going for this long and I am thankful that there are so many of you still following it.
Thank you!!
Last week, Above the Law published an interesting story about a case in which the lawyers for the Department of Health and Human Services were called out for filing a brief with fake cites. The decision stated that "in addition to the errors discussed above, nine more citations that the Agency provides are entirely fictitious, eleven do not support the propositions for which they are cited, and ten have partially incorrect citations and do not support the propositions for which they are cited. Overall, twenty-two of the exceptions brief’s twenty-nine footnotes — and thirty-five of the forty-two legal or record citations — are fictitious, erroneous, or irrelevant." Are the lawyers incompetent, sloppy or just reliant on "super intelligence"?
The Wisconsin Circuit Court’s Fourth Judicial District issued a new Interim Policy establishing guidelines for the use of generative artificial intelligence in circuit court proceedings in the district. The Fourth Judicial District includes Calumet, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Manitowoc, Marquette, Sheboygan, Waushara, and Winnebago counties. Go here for the details.
In reducing a proposed fee award in a Google privacy settlement, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman said that the proposed rate of $3,000 an hour was “patently unreasonable.” Above the Law and the ABA Journal have the story.
Here is a basic tip in our continuing series on "how not to practice law:" Do not call yourself a lawyer unless you are one!
By now I am sure you have heard the news that the new White House press secretary has been fired after just a few days on the job, possibly in part because of the consequences of holding herself out to be a lawyer even though she is not admitted to practice law anywhere.
According to the news, although she graduated from law school, she failed the bar exam in California and there is no evidence that she has been admitted anywhere else. In fact, she referred to herself as a lawyer many times on national TV and claims to have held the title of "General Counsel" for a company at one point. Confronted with the truth, she doubled down with the idiotic notion that there is a difference between calling oneself a lawyer as opposed to an attorney, which is, of course, nonsense.
But it gets worse, because now not only is she out of a job, she is a joke within the legal community, and an embarrassment to the administration, AND there is a chance she might face a criminal investigation for the misdemeanor of pretending to be a lawyer.
Ironically, because she was never a lawyer to begin with, she is not subject to the disciplinary system, but the state bar can refer her to the state's prosecutors for an investigation on whether her conduct violated a California statute that says, in part, that “[a]ny person advertising or holding himself or herself out as practicing or entitled to practice law . . . who is not an active licensee of the State Bar, or otherwise authorized pursuant to statute or court rule to practice law in this state at the time of doing so, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in a county jail or by a fine of up to one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment."
The state bar has been asked to make such a referral, but I will be surprised if they do. She will just go down as holding the record for the shortest tenure as a WH press secretary and as another sad entry in the long list of unqualified people hired or appointed by the Trump administration.
For a short video explaining the issue, you can check out this comment in YouTube.
On September 30, 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 574, which legal industry news outlets described as a first-of-its-kind framework for attorneys’ and arbitrators’ use of generative AI. The law does not push AI out of legal practice. Instead, it sets ground rules for confidentiality, verification, disclosure, and human judgment.
Lex Blog publishing has a comment on the new law here and a link to another one here.
An Oklahoma attorney has asked the 10th Circuit to revive his First Amendment challenge of mandatory state bar membership, which he argues violates his right to free association. Courthouse News Service has more on the story here.
Above the Law is reporting that New Mexico attorney Stephen Aarons was held in contempt and fined $5,000 after filing an appellate brief containing “false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses." This is a different type of "hallucination" which -- at least to my knowledge - had been limited to made up citations or quotes. You can read the story here.
Back in June a coalition of legal groups, judges and attorneys filed (and later refiled) a formal ethics complaint against former Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing her of “serious professional misconduct” in her leadership of the Justice Department. After the original filing, the Florida Bar declined to address it, explaining that it does not investigate government officers while they hold office. Once Bondi left her position at the DoJ, the claimants re-filed the complaint, but it is not clear the the Bar has done anything about it. JuristNews noticed, and published a comment here.
The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility recently released a new ethics opinion (number 525) on the recently amended Rule 1.14 on the duties owed to clients with decision making limitations." You can download a copy here. The abstract reads as follows:
A lawyer who determines that his client has decision-making limitations is obligated under Rule 1.14 to maintain an ordinary client-lawyer relationship insofar as possible, and lawyers owe clients with decision-making limitations the same obligations as any other client, including abiding by the client’s decisions regarding the objectives of the representation. In certain situations, lawyers may take protective action to prevent substantial injury to clients with decision-making limitations. In taking protective action, a lawyer may disclose protected information, but only to the extent reasonably necessary to prevent substantial injury to the client. While the recommendation of a guardianship may be an appropriate protective action in certain limited circumstances, the appointment of a guardian is a serious deprivation of the client’s rights and should not be pursued if other, less drastic, solutions are available. Although a lawyer may recommend or support the appointment of someone the lawyer reasonably believes would be a fit guardian, a lawyer whose client has decision-making limitations may not represent a third-party petitioning for a guardianship over the lawyer’s client. A lawyer representing a client with decision-making limitations may withdraw in accordance with Model Rule 1.16.
LexBlog Publishing has published a long review/survey of the rules regarding lawyer advertising with links to the rule in every state. If you are doing research on the subject, go check it out. You can find it here.
Over at Above the Law, Joe Patrice has published a short post worth reading called Florida Bar Hides From Ethical Responsibilities, Shrugs As DHS Lawyer Compares Federal Judges To Murderers And Rapists. You can find it here. In it, he reminds us that
When the Florida Bar didn’t want to perform the most basic of its duties as the state’s designated professional licensing authority, it invented a new rule out of whole cloth to justify punting a detailed ethics complaint about then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. The entity charged with maintaining the integrity of the Florida legal profession couldn’t even consider the complaint against Bondi because it cannot investigate a sitting officer appointed under the U.S. Constitution while in office.
More importantly, that even though over 120 scholars, practitioners, and former judges wrote to remind the Florida Bar that since Bondi left office their reasoning does not bar taking on the complaint, the Florida Bar has ignored it. And now, the Florida Bar has used the same reasoning to refuse to investigate DHS General Counsel James Percival.
Patrice argues, and I agree, that
If the profession is to survive this administration, licensing authorities need to get serious about sanctioning and disbarring these people. These are not close ethical calls. This is the exact behavior that we created professional discipline to punish, and every time a licensing authority looks the other way it undermines the rule of law and its own credibility.
The ABA has more here.
Two of Florida’s largest judicial circuits now require lawyers and self-represented litigants to disclose AI-generated court submissions, and to certify their accuracy, but according to at least one commentator the new rule essentially just "reminds lawyers of something that predates computers, the internet, and probably most of the courthouses we practice in today: if you put your name on a filing, you are responsible for what is in it." For more on the story go here and here.
It is true that the new rule states the obvious: that it is required that all AI-generated content must be reviewed for accuracy. But the new rule goes further by requiring actual disclosure of the use of AI, something I don't think many other jurisdictions are requiring explicitly yet.
According to one source, the order states that “[a]ny attorney or self-represented litigant who uses any generative artificial intelligence tool in the preparation of a pleading, motion, memorandum, response, proposed order, or other court record, must disclose such use on the face of the filing.”
Interestingly, the two circuits apparently did not agree on the appropriate sanctions for violations of the rule.
Failure to comply with the order in the 11th Judicial Circuit could lead to sanctions that include, “striking of the filing; denial of requested relief; monetary sanctions; contempt proceedings; referral to The Florida Bar or other appropriate authority; and any other sanction deemed appropriate by the Court.”
Failure to comply with the order in the 17th Judicial Circuit could lead to sanctions that include, “contempt; striking of pleadings or dismissal of action; fines and/or the imposition of attorney’s fees; and referral to The Florida Bar for disciplinary proceedings.”
As you know, cases involving lawyers getting in trouble for using AI generated cites of, or quotes from, non-existent cases keep piling up. Check out this database for the latest count.
And, if you have been paying attention you might agree with me that the types of sanctions imposed by courts are becoming more severe. It seems judges are losing patience.
So, today I am writing to report on a recent case in which a federal court in Mississippi sanctioned four attorneys, two on each side of a contract dispute. What makes the case worth pointing out is not only that so many lawyers were sanctioned but that the court imposed a specific sanction I had not seen yet for cases like this. The judge disqualified all the lawyers involved in the case, and two out-of-state attorneys who had been admitted pro-hac-vice to participate in the case were barred from practicing in the Northern District of Mississippi for two years. The judge also said they would send a copy of the sanctions order to the state bars where each of the attorneys are practicing so that those jurisdictions could decide if parallel sanctions would be appropriate.
One of the lawyers reportedly stated that she did not know what hallucinated cases were, which, if true, can be seen as an admission of incompetence in itself at this point.
CNS has a link to the decision here, and Above the Law has a summary here and some analysis here.
Effective June 1, 2026, the New York State Unified Court System implemented a new statewide rule (Part 161) governing attorneys’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) in court filings. The rule permits attorneys to use AI tools when preparing submissions to the court and does not require disclosure of AI use. However, attorneys remain fully responsible for the accuracy of any AI-assisted work and must independently verify that filings do not contain fabricated cases, statutes, citations, or other false information. You can read more details on the story here.
Just a few days after reporting that Colorado has formally moved to prevent the use of "alternative business structures" in the practice of law, the ABA has published an article suggesting that there is a "quiet restructuring of legal services" through the use of those types of structures and management organizations. The article starts:
The legal profession is in the middle of a quiet but very impactful structural shift. In Arizona, alternative business structures have created a regulated pathway for multidisciplinary ownership and innovation. In the rest of the country, management services organizations have emerged as an accepted preferred model for delivering operational sophistication while staying within the boundaries of ABA Model Rule 5.4.
The author argues that traditional law firm structures make long term investment difficult and that Arizona’s ABS framework offers a solution by providing a regulated path for multidisciplinary ownership. However, he states that in the rest of the country, the management services organizations law firm model has become the preferred alternative. He argues that when structured properly, an MSO does not violate Rule 5.4 because the law firm remains a separate legal entity owned entirely by lawyers, who maintain full independence of legal judgment
And then, there are the states that still strictly enforce bans on sharing fees with non-lawyers or entities, which I believe is still the majority.
I have not done a state by state survey to know which side of the argument is winning but it is obvious that the debate continues. And, as I have reported elsewhere repeatedly, the debate also continues as to whether the use of alternative structures has created more access to legal services. Some studies suggest that is not the case, even though that has always been one of the claims of those who support alternative business structures.
For all my posts on alternative business structures go here.
About a week and a half ago, it was reported that a coalition of legal groups, judges and attorneys on Wednesday refiled a formal ethics complaint against former Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing her of “serious professional misconduct” in her leadership of the Justice Department and handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Courthouse News Service has the story here. Above the Law has more here.
The story says "refiled" because a complaint was filed last year (around June), while she was still in office. (See here). That complaint was rejected by the state of Florida on the basis that the state would not prosecute her while she held her office as Attorney General. Well, now that she is no longer serving in that capacity, it is time for Florida to decide whether to take on the complaint. I doubt they will, but I hope I am wrong.
Carolyn Elefant's new article Why Attorneys Can Ethically Use General-Purpose GenAI for Client Matters Without Redacting Everything is available here.
