1 Dec 2025CzechiaUnidentified legal research tool
On 1 December 2025 the presiding judge of a chamber of the Czech Constitutional Court fined a Prague lawyer 25,000 crowns (a quarter of the statutory maximum) for grossly obstructing proceedings. The lawyer had filed a constitutional complaint, for a client refused a temporary residence permit, that argued from 12 decisions of the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights; the court found that a substantial part of them did not exist and part were grossly misinterpreted. The order says the complaint showed signs of generative AI and that the court presumed the lawyer had generated it with an AI model and then failed to verify the citations. The lawyer confirmed to INFO.CZ that an AI tool was used, described it as a paid professional model from a legal information system provider, said the output was not checked enough, and expressed regret. The court invited the client to correct the complaint so that the client would suffer no procedural harm; the complaint was later rejected as manifestly unfounded on 30 January 2026. INFO.CZ reported on 10 December 2025 that the lawyer had apologised and paid the fine and that the Czech Bar Association's supervisory board was examining the case.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 26/10/2026
31 Mar 2026 to 11 Sept 2026United StatesIrys (reported)
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered a senior associate at Musick, Peeler & Garrett, the outside firm defending State Farm in a homeowner's lawsuit over a fire-damaged home, to pay a $999.99 sanction after the associate's motions in limine cited cases, quotations and holdings that did not exist, Law360 reported on 14 September 2026. In a declaration reproduced by Reason's Volokh Conspiracy, the associate said she used an AI program called Irys to prepare the motions, did not check some of the citations, and wrongly believed the program was cite-checked through the firm's Westlaw subscription; she confirmed seven non-existent case citations across eight motions. The plaintiff's lawyers found the citations and raised them at a status conference on 7 August 2026. The firm acknowledged citations that appeared to be AI hallucinations, and its lead trial counsel apologised to the court and the plaintiff. According to Law360, the judge had considered up to $5,000, and the amount set is one cent below the level at which California law requires a court to notify the State Bar.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 17/10/2026
21 Nov 2025United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 25 September 2026 a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a defence motion for sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 against a California-barred lawyer admitted for one case (pro hac vice) to represent the plaintiff. The court found that an opposition the lawyer filed on 21 November 2025 was replete with inaccurate citations, including a quotation attributed to a case with a fictitious Westlaw citation, and that later oppositions cited a non-existent case. In response to the court's order to show cause, the lawyer admitted using AI to draft the first opposition and explained a belief that the enterprise-level AI software in use did not hallucinate cases. The court revoked the lawyer's pro hac vice admission and ordered the lawyer's firm to pay the defendants' reasonable fees and costs, capped at $10,000. The order does not name the AI product.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026
2026SpainUnidentified AI drafting tool
The Criminal Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) fined a lawyer 420 euros for breaching the duty of truthfulness and good faith, after an appeal the lawyer filed contained 48 citations of Supreme Court judgments and a report of the General Council of the Judiciary that did not exist. According to the court's order, as described in its press release of 13 February 2026, the lawyer used a general-purpose AI tool to draft the appeal and did not check a single citation against the free public case-law database; the court's documentalist verified that the references were false. The court referred the matter to the lawyer's bar association for possible disciplinary action and set the fine at about half the annual cost of a legal-specific AI tool, taking into account that the lawyer admitted the facts and expressed remorse. The court had first flagged the citations in its judgment dismissing the appeal, reported on 5 January 2026, which opened a separate proceeding. The lawyer told the court of comments and mockery from colleagues after the case became public.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026
24 Apr 2026United StatesUnidentified AI research tool
On 24 April 2026 the Supreme Court of Alabama dismissed an appeal by two siblings in a family dispute over living trusts because their lawyer, W. Perry Hall, had filed briefs in which most of the legal authorities were misquoted or did not exist. The court said they appeared to be AI hallucinations, and at a show-cause hearing in February 2026 Hall admitted that many authorities did not exist and that he had improperly used AI to obtain them. The court ordered Hall to pay the opposing party's fees and costs of $17,200 and double appeal costs, barred him from filing in the court without a co-signing attorney and referred him to the Alabama State Bar. It said the dismissal was imposed as a sanction because of the particularly egregious facts. One justice, concurring in part and dissenting in part, objected to dismissing the appeal as a sanction for the lawyer's conduct but would have affirmed the judgment against the clients on the merits.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 1 source · Added 14/10/2026
5 Nov 2025 to 8 Jun 2026United StatesFirst Drafts and unidentified legal research tool
In a fee dispute between a Louisiana attorney and the City of Aberdeen, Mississippi, briefs filed for both sides in late 2025 cited six cases that do not exist. The attorneys admitted the citations came from unverified AI use: the plaintiff's out-of-state counsel, Kathleen M. Wilson, drafted her filing with an AI drafting program called 'First Drafts', and the City's out-of-state counsel, Kathryn Y. Williams, used an in-house AI legal research tool. Senior Judge Sharion Aycock stayed the case and cancelled the March 2026 trial, then on 8 June 2026 revoked both attorneys' pro hac vice admissions, barred them from the district for two years and fined them $2,500 and $3,500, and disqualified and fined the two local counsel who had signed the filings. Both litigants were left without counsel and given 60 days to find new representation.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
12 Mar 2026 to 25 Aug 2026United KingdomUnidentified AI tool
On 25 August 2026 the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal struck Abhishek Kumar off the Register of Foreign Lawyers after finding proved that his 12 March 2026 Answer to the SRA's Rule 12 Statement contained misleading quotations and citations produced with generative AI — including a non-existent 'SRA v Chan [2020] EWHC 1502' and a miscited 'SRA v James, MacGregor & Naylor [2018] EWCA Civ 1420' that is actually an intellectual-property case — and that his 9 April 2026 email admitting AI use was itself AI-drafted with further errors. The tribunal said it would have struck him off on that allegation alone; the parallel ground was his January 2024 conviction under s.21 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. This is the SDT's first case on a lawyer's use of AI, per the SRA's counsel.
Core concern High reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 15/09/2026
1 Aug 2025 to 9 Sept 2026United StatesChatGPT
Santa Fe defense attorney Stephen Aarons used ChatGPT (OpenAI's o3) on a Rev.com transcript and the record to draft briefing in the murder appeal of Oscar Renee Sandoval; the brief contained fabricated witnesses and testimony (including police officers 'Michelle Amarillo' and 'Sanchez' and invented testimony attributed to real people) and misdescribed real precedents. After a 21 August 2026 show-cause hearing at which Aarons admitted he had not verified the output, the New Mexico Supreme Court's written order of 9 September 2026 held him in direct contempt, fined him $5,000 payable to the State Bar Client Protection Fund within 30 days, removed him from the case, barred him from appearing before the court pending a disciplinary-board referral, struck the filed briefs and reassigned the appeal to the public defender.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources · Added 15/09/2026