The Sixth Circuit Says Citing Real Cases Did Not Absolve a Lawyer Whose AI-Drafted Briefs Carried False Quotations

On April 3, 2026 the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion, recommended for publication, in No. 25-5623. The appeal is a challenge to a criminal sentence, and the opinion does not resolve it. It deals instead with the conduct of the defendant's lawyer, who had been appointed under the Criminal Justice Act. By his own admission, the court says, the lawyer used artificial intelligence to draft the briefs "and then filed them without properly verifying the cited legal authorities." The result, it says, "was multiple misrepresentations of law to this Court."

The opinion names the lawyer, the defendant and the AI product. This article names none of them. Parts of the opinion follow, not the whole.

The Errors, and the Lawyer's Response

On its initial review of the case, the court says, it "began to suspect" that the briefs were generated, "at least in part, by artificial-intelligence software." The first tell was the file name of the principal brief, which carried the name of a legal research provider's own AI platform.

On its substantive review, the court found three problematic citations. "Each of these citations references genuine legal authorities," it says. "But the purported direct quotations do not appear in their cited sources." The court could find no relevant authority with the same or substantially similar language, so "it did not appear that the misattributions involved mere citation mix-ups or transcription errors." The briefs also misrepresented the holdings of two of the court's earlier decisions. One had upheld an enhancement under the guideline at issue, and the principal brief said that enhancement was reversed.

The court ordered the lawyer to show cause on February 23, 2026, and required him, among other things, to explain who wrote the briefs, whether generative AI was used to draft them, and "the processes that were used to cite-check each brief." In his response he admitted that he used AI to prepare both briefs. He said he had directed an unnamed "staff" member to upload district court documents to the AI program to create a first draft of the principal brief, and had then worked in that file for six hours. He conceded that the three quotations were the product of artificial intelligence and do not appear in any legal authorities, and he admitted that the errors occurred because he "failed to adequately review and verify the draft brief produced by artificial intelligence." He accepted full responsibility.

A Duty That Does Not Depend on the Tool

"New technologies present significant promise for the legal field," the opinion says. "But all in the legal profession must be clear eyed about technology's potential pitfalls." Attorneys, it says, "should not utilize technology without knowing the ways in which it can be misused or contribute to inaccuracies." That remains true, the court adds, "even when new tools are sponsored by trusted legal technology providers."

The court says it does not try to set out every ethical consideration, but that relevant steps "may include" reviewing and validating content produced by AI, considering whether to disclose its use to clients, safeguarding confidential client information, firm-wide policies, ethical billing, and keeping current with jurisdiction-specific guidelines. Attorneys, it says, "have an ethical obligation to verify the citations and propositions they submit to courts," an obligation that reflects "duties of competence and candor that apply no matter the tools attorneys use." Relying on "staff," rather than on himself or another attorney, to supervise the AI-generated work "fell short of his obligations as attorney of record."

That the briefs cited real legal authorities, rather than fictitious cases, "does not absolve him," the opinion says. His failure to verify the AI output "still resulted in the submission of false quotations and misleading legal arguments to this Court."

A cite that leads to a real case can still carry words the case never said. The duty the court describes reaches the propositions a brief puts forward, not only whether the cases exist.

What Followed

The court says it appreciated the lawyer's timely response and his candor, and notes that this "appears to be the first time a court has had occasion to address" his misconduct in his practice of law. But it says he "committed inexcusable transgressions during the appellate phase of this case," and that his serving as court-appointed counsel for an indigent defendant through a publicly funded program "only compounds the harm to our system of justice."

It ordered that he not be compensated under the Criminal Justice Act for his time on the appeal. The opinion goes to the Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit "to consider disciplinary proceedings under Sixth Circuit Local Rule 46," and copies go to the chief judge and the clerk of the district court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and to the Kentucky Bar Association's disciplinary clerk. By a separate order the same day, the court removed him from the case and had the clerk appoint replacement counsel and lock the briefs he filed.