Case Insights
- Phantom Citations, Tangible Penalties– From Alabama’s prison‑conditions battle to Los Angeles municipal litigation, judges are sanctioning marquee firms after ChatGPT‑style tools spun up cases, statutes, and scholarly articles that never existed.
- Malpractice Premiums on the Rise– Insurers are adding “generative‑AI riders” that can void coverage when lawyers rely on unverified output; brokers report 2%–10% premium bumps for firms without AI‑verification programs.
- Guardrails Over Hype– Am Law heavyweights now deploy prompt‑engineering boot camps, chain‑of‑custody metadata, and two‑lawyer sign‑offs for every AI‑touched filing—turning yesterday’s marketing buzz into today’s compliance mandate.
By Samuel Lopez – USA Herald
On May 21 U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco revealed that Butler Snow LLP—ranked among the nation’s 100 largest firms—had submitted a prison‑litigation brief laced with nine citations to non‑existent opinions. The bogus precedents, generated by an internal GPT‑based tool, were so realistic that junior attorneys failed to notice until opposing counsel flagged them. Butler Snow’s public mea culpa called the error “inexcusable,” and the judge is weighing monetary sanctions and mandatory ethics training. Alabama Reflector
