Judge disqualifies three Butler Snow attorneys from case over AI citations

By Sara Merken

July 24 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Alabama disqualified three lawyers from U.S. law firm Butler Snow from a case after they inadvertently included made-up citations generated by artificial intelligence in court filings.

U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco in a Wednesday order reprimanded the lawyers at the Mississippi-founded firm for making false statements in court and referred the issue to the Alabama State Bar, which handles attorney disciplinary matters. Manasco did not impose monetary sanctions, as some judges have done in other cases across the country involving AI use.

Fabricating legal authority "demands substantially greater accountability than the reprimands and modest fines that have become common as courts confront this form of AI misuse," Manasco said. "As a practical matter, time is telling us – quickly and loudly – that those sanctions are insufficient deterrents."

The case is the latest example of a judge sanctioning or admonishing lawyers as AI-generated "hallucinations" have continued to crop up in court filings ever since ChatGPT and other generative AI programs became widely available. Professional rules require lawyers to vet their work however it is produced.

The three Butler Snow lawyers were part of a team defending former Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn in an inmate's lawsuit alleging he was repeatedly attacked in prison. Dunn has denied wrongdoing.

The judge said the three lawyers' conduct was "tantamount to bad faith." She sanctioned partner Matthew Reeves, who admitted to using AI to generate the citations and including them in the filings without verification. Reeves in a May filing apologized to the court and said he regretted his "lapse in diligence and judgment."

She also disqualified partners William Cranford and William Lunsford, who each signed their names onto the filings. The lawyers said in May filings that they did not independently review the legal citations that were added.

Reeves, Cranford and Lunsford did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

The judge declined to sanction Butler Snow, finding the firm "acted reasonably in its efforts to prevent this misconduct and doubled down on its precautionary and responsive measures when its nightmare scenario unfolded."

The firm previously warned its attorneys about the risks of AI and escalated the issue after the court issued an order for the lawyers to explain what happened in the case. Butler Snow also mounted an internal investigation and retained another firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, for an independent review to verify citations in 40 other cases, the judge said.

A Butler Snow spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did one of the lawyers representing plaintiff Frankie Johnson, or a lawyer from the Alabama attorney general's office, which had appointed Lunsford to litigate on behalf of the state, according to the order.

The judge ordered the three lawyers to share a copy of the order with their clients, opposing lawyers and judges in other pending state or federal cases in which they are involved, and also to every lawyer at Butler Snow.