{"id":50461,"topic":"ai","source":"Bloomberg Law News","title":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation - Bloomberg Law News","url":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","url_hash":"238a8c599297c913b3f33aa2915b073ed949646b","author":"","summary":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation Bloomberg Law News","content":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation.\nRecent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations. Critically, courts extend liability to all signing attorneys, so one attorneyâs unverified AI use can put an entire team at risk.\nThe practical response isnât to ban AI but to verify every citation against the primary source before filing and to assign clear responsibility for that verification.\nWhile the common thread across these decisions is Rule 11, which applies to all federal litigation, the guidance is especially worth underscoring for IP litigators, whose filings tend to rely on dense, doctrine-specific authority and detailed technical descriptions, the kind of material where AI hallucinations are both easy to introduce and easy to overlook.\nThe Cases\nEach decision below draws out a Rule 11 lesson: the duty to verify cited authority, its reach across every attorney who signs a filing, and the consequences when AI-tainted filings compound other defects.\nHernandez v. Lopez, a trademark dispute, sets the baseline: âWhile the Court does not prohibit counsel from using generative AI tools, counsel must comply with Rule 11(b), including confirmation that cases cited within a brief exist.â After finding three cited authorities that âdo not appear to existâ and were âlikely hallucinated,â the court issued an order to show cause why sanctions shouldnât be imposed on the attorneys.\nLexos Media IP, LLC v. Overstock.com, Inc., a patent infringement action, found that all five attorneys whose names appeared on the briefs containing defective ChatGPT-generated authority violated Rule 11(b)(2)âeven though only one attorney had used ChatGPT and inserted the errors. Rule 11(b)(2) requires attorneys to certify that the legal contentions in a filing are supported by existing law or a non-frivolous argument for changing the law. The briefs contained fabricated quotations, non-existent citations, and materially misleading descriptions of legal authority generated through ChatGPT.\nThe court held that responsibility wasnât limited to the attorney who inserted and failed to verify the defective material. Each attorney listed in the signature block had a nondelegable duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the cited authorities before signing or filing the briefs.\nAll five attorneys were publicly admonished for allowing their names to appear on filings that hadnât been reasonably verified. The additional sanctions tracked each attorneyâs role and degree of fault. The attorney who used ChatGPT and inserted the hallucinated authorityâand failed to disclose that use to anyone in the firm, co-counsel, or the clientâreceived the most severe sanctions: a $5,000 fine, loss of his pro hac vice status, mandatory self-reporting to disciplinary authorities, and new internal verification requirements for future filings. The two senior attorneys and local counsel received smaller fines. The firmâs managing member was also ordered to implement and certify accuracy procedures for future filings. The court further emphasized that local counsel adds credibility to a filing and must independently confirm its accuracy.\nA third decision, Meril and Keith Dillard v. CBS Studios, Inc., highlights another important risk: errors in AI-assisted filings may cause a court to conclude that amending a complaint would be futile. In this copyright action, the court found that the pro se plaintiffâs submissions included mischaracterizations of the defendantâs conduct and prior court orders, a supplemental briefing containing apparently AI-generated images, and an opposition brief citing several nonexistent opinions. Because pro se parties are also bound by the Rule 11 duty to confirm that cited authorities exist and support their propositions, the court dismissed with prejudice, finding amendment would yield âadditional unsupported allegationsâ and more defective filings rather than curing the complaintâs deficiencies.\nPractical Takeaways\nTaken together, these decisions illustrate that the principal risk isnât the use of AI itself, but the failure to verify and supervise AI-assisted work. The duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry doesnât rest solely with the attorney who used the tool or inserted the material. It extends to every attorney who signs or appears on the filing. Local counsel, supervising attorneys, and co-counsel therefore canât assume that someone else has confirmed the accuracy of the citations, quotations, and legal arguments.\nThese lessons are especially important in IP litigation, where briefs often combine specialized precedent, technical records, expert submissions, and contributions from multiple firms or practice groups. That complexity can make plausible-sounding errors more difficult to detect. The consequences may also extend beyond sanctions: inaccurate authority or unsupported technical assertions can damage counselâs credibility, weaken a partyâs substantive position, and affect the courtâs willingness to permit further amendment.\nAny brief that has multiple authors also runs the risk that a blanket prohibition on AI use by one practice group or firm will be insufficient. The prudent response therefore is to prioritize governance centered on verification, supervision, and accountability.\nPossible governance standards to consider include requiring internal disclosure of AI use to supervisors, confirming that each cited authority supports the stated proposition, assigning clear review responsibilities, and/or requiring substantive review by supervising and local counsel. The focus should be on a reliable process that ensures accuracy, supervision, and accountability before filing.\nThis article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.\nAuthor Information\nGreg Lantier is a first chair trial lawyer and appellate advocate who is a partner at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on complex patent, trade secret, copyright, breach of contract, and intellectual property licensing disputes that sit at the intersection of law, technology, and business strategy.\nLiv Herriot is counsel at Sidley Austin who represents and advises companies in high-stakes patent litigation and other complex intellectual property disputes, with a focus on protecting innovation and managing intellectual property risk.\nRaneem Eter is an associate at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on patent litigation, drawing on her background in biology, chemistry, and the biotechnology industry.\nGilbert Smolenski contributed to this article.\nInterested in writing? Review our author guidelines and submit pitches to Insights@bloombergindustry.com.\nLearn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:\nSee Breaking News in Context\nBloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis.\nAlready a subscriber?\nLog in to keep reading or access research tools and resources.","image_url":"https://bwrite-static.bloombergindustry.com/dims4/default/acde5f6/2147483647/crop/4000x1542+0+172/resize/960x370%3E/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbloomberg-bna-brightspot.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2F18%2F2b%2F21b545af48959e62fa609f11a0f9%2Fhttps-delivery-gettyimages.com%2Fdownloads%2F2268540971","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-07-31T08:30:00+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-07-31T09:15:05+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation. Recent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations.","cluster_id":null,"extract_retries":0,"extract_error":null,"contract_version":"news_item.v1","format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1","dedup_url":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339,"usable_text_length":7224,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339}},"news_item":{"id":50461,"canonical_url":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","source_url":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","title":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation - Bloomberg Law News","source_name":"Bloomberg Law News","author":null,"published_at":"2026-07-31T08:30:00+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"rss_summary":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation Bloomberg Law News","full_text":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation.\nRecent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations. Critically, courts extend liability to all signing attorneys, so one attorneyâs unverified AI use can put an entire team at risk.\nThe practical response isnât to ban AI but to verify every citation against the primary source before filing and to assign clear responsibility for that verification.\nWhile the common thread across these decisions is Rule 11, which applies to all federal litigation, the guidance is especially worth underscoring for IP litigators, whose filings tend to rely on dense, doctrine-specific authority and detailed technical descriptions, the kind of material where AI hallucinations are both easy to introduce and easy to overlook.\nThe Cases\nEach decision below draws out a Rule 11 lesson: the duty to verify cited authority, its reach across every attorney who signs a filing, and the consequences when AI-tainted filings compound other defects.\nHernandez v. Lopez, a trademark dispute, sets the baseline: âWhile the Court does not prohibit counsel from using generative AI tools, counsel must comply with Rule 11(b), including confirmation that cases cited within a brief exist.â After finding three cited authorities that âdo not appear to existâ and were âlikely hallucinated,â the court issued an order to show cause why sanctions shouldnât be imposed on the attorneys.\nLexos Media IP, LLC v. Overstock.com, Inc., a patent infringement action, found that all five attorneys whose names appeared on the briefs containing defective ChatGPT-generated authority violated Rule 11(b)(2)âeven though only one attorney had used ChatGPT and inserted the errors. Rule 11(b)(2) requires attorneys to certify that the legal contentions in a filing are supported by existing law or a non-frivolous argument for changing the law. The briefs contained fabricated quotations, non-existent citations, and materially misleading descriptions of legal authority generated through ChatGPT.\nThe court held that responsibility wasnât limited to the attorney who inserted and failed to verify the defective material. Each attorney listed in the signature block had a nondelegable duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the cited authorities before signing or filing the briefs.\nAll five attorneys were publicly admonished for allowing their names to appear on filings that hadnât been reasonably verified. The additional sanctions tracked each attorneyâs role and degree of fault. The attorney who used ChatGPT and inserted the hallucinated authorityâand failed to disclose that use to anyone in the firm, co-counsel, or the clientâreceived the most severe sanctions: a $5,000 fine, loss of his pro hac vice status, mandatory self-reporting to disciplinary authorities, and new internal verification requirements for future filings. The two senior attorneys and local counsel received smaller fines. The firmâs managing member was also ordered to implement and certify accuracy procedures for future filings. The court further emphasized that local counsel adds credibility to a filing and must independently confirm its accuracy.\nA third decision, Meril and Keith Dillard v. CBS Studios, Inc., highlights another important risk: errors in AI-assisted filings may cause a court to conclude that amending a complaint would be futile. In this copyright action, the court found that the pro se plaintiffâs submissions included mischaracterizations of the defendantâs conduct and prior court orders, a supplemental briefing containing apparently AI-generated images, and an opposition brief citing several nonexistent opinions. Because pro se parties are also bound by the Rule 11 duty to confirm that cited authorities exist and support their propositions, the court dismissed with prejudice, finding amendment would yield âadditional unsupported allegationsâ and more defective filings rather than curing the complaintâs deficiencies.\nPractical Takeaways\nTaken together, these decisions illustrate that the principal risk isnât the use of AI itself, but the failure to verify and supervise AI-assisted work. The duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry doesnât rest solely with the attorney who used the tool or inserted the material. It extends to every attorney who signs or appears on the filing. Local counsel, supervising attorneys, and co-counsel therefore canât assume that someone else has confirmed the accuracy of the citations, quotations, and legal arguments.\nThese lessons are especially important in IP litigation, where briefs often combine specialized precedent, technical records, expert submissions, and contributions from multiple firms or practice groups. That complexity can make plausible-sounding errors more difficult to detect. The consequences may also extend beyond sanctions: inaccurate authority or unsupported technical assertions can damage counselâs credibility, weaken a partyâs substantive position, and affect the courtâs willingness to permit further amendment.\nAny brief that has multiple authors also runs the risk that a blanket prohibition on AI use by one practice group or firm will be insufficient. The prudent response therefore is to prioritize governance centered on verification, supervision, and accountability.\nPossible governance standards to consider include requiring internal disclosure of AI use to supervisors, confirming that each cited authority supports the stated proposition, assigning clear review responsibilities, and/or requiring substantive review by supervising and local counsel. The focus should be on a reliable process that ensures accuracy, supervision, and accountability before filing.\nThis article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.\nAuthor Information\nGreg Lantier is a first chair trial lawyer and appellate advocate who is a partner at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on complex patent, trade secret, copyright, breach of contract, and intellectual property licensing disputes that sit at the intersection of law, technology, and business strategy.\nLiv Herriot is counsel at Sidley Austin who represents and advises companies in high-stakes patent litigation and other complex intellectual property disputes, with a focus on protecting innovation and managing intellectual property risk.\nRaneem Eter is an associate at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on patent litigation, drawing on her background in biology, chemistry, and the biotechnology industry.\nGilbert Smolenski contributed to this article.\nInterested in writing? Review our author guidelines and submit pitches to Insights@bloombergindustry.com.\nLearn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:\nSee Breaking News in Context\nBloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis.\nAlready a subscriber?\nLog in to keep reading or access research tools and resources.","excerpt":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation. Recent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations.","extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339,"usable_text_length":7224,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339}}},"display_formats":["compact","card","full","digest_section","json"]},"daily_stack_record":{"title":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation - Bloomberg Law News","url":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","summary":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation. Recent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations.","source":"Bloomberg Law News","date":"2026-07-31T08:30:00+00:00","content":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation.\nRecent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations. Critically, courts extend liability to all signing attorneys, so one attorneyâs unverified AI use can put an entire team at risk.\nThe practical response isnât to ban AI but to verify every citation against the primary source before filing and to assign clear responsibility for that verification.\nWhile the common thread across these decisions is Rule 11, which applies to all federal litigation, the guidance is especially worth underscoring for IP litigators, whose filings tend to rely on dense, doctrine-specific authority and detailed technical descriptions, the kind of material where AI hallucinations are both easy to introduce and easy to overlook.\nThe Cases\nEach decision below draws out a Rule 11 lesson: the duty to verify cited authority, its reach across every attorney who signs a filing, and the consequences when AI-tainted filings compound other defects.\nHernandez v. Lopez, a trademark dispute, sets the baseline: âWhile the Court does not prohibit counsel from using generative AI tools, counsel must comply with Rule 11(b), including confirmation that cases cited within a brief exist.â After finding three cited authorities that âdo not appear to existâ and were âlikely hallucinated,â the court issued an order to show cause why sanctions shouldnât be imposed on the attorneys.\nLexos Media IP, LLC v. Overstock.com, Inc., a patent infringement action, found that all five attorneys whose names appeared on the briefs containing defective ChatGPT-generated authority violated Rule 11(b)(2)âeven though only one attorney had used ChatGPT and inserted the errors. Rule 11(b)(2) requires attorneys to certify that the legal contentions in a filing are supported by existing law or a non-frivolous argument for changing the law. The briefs contained fabricated quotations, non-existent citations, and materially misleading descriptions of legal authority generated through ChatGPT.\nThe court held that responsibility wasnât limited to the attorney who inserted and failed to verify the defective material. Each attorney listed in the signature block had a nondelegable duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the cited authorities before signing or filing the briefs.\nAll five attorneys were publicly admonished for allowing their names to appear on filings that hadnât been reasonably verified. The additional sanctions tracked each attorneyâs role and degree of fault. The attorney who used ChatGPT and inserted the hallucinated authorityâand failed to disclose that use to anyone in the firm, co-counsel, or the clientâreceived the most severe sanctions: a $5,000 fine, loss of his pro hac vice status, mandatory self-reporting to disciplinary authorities, and new internal verification requirements for future filings. The two senior attorneys and local counsel received smaller fines. The firmâs managing member was also ordered to implement and certify accuracy procedures for future filings. The court further emphasized that local counsel adds credibility to a filing and must independently confirm its accuracy.\nA third decision, Meril and Keith Dillard v. CBS Studios, Inc., highlights another important risk: errors in AI-assisted filings may cause a court to conclude that amending a complaint would be futile. In this copyright action, the court found that the pro se plaintiffâs submissions included mischaracterizations of the defendantâs conduct and prior court orders, a supplemental briefing containing apparently AI-generated images, and an opposition brief citing several nonexistent opinions. Because pro se parties are also bound by the Rule 11 duty to confirm that cited authorities exist and support their propositions, the court dismissed with prejudice, finding amendment would yield âadditional unsupported allegationsâ and more defective filings rather than curing the complaintâs deficiencies.\nPractical Takeaways\nTaken together, these decisions illustrate that the principal risk isnât the use of AI itself, but the failure to verify and supervise AI-assisted work. The duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry doesnât rest solely with the attorney who used the tool or inserted the material. It extends to every attorney who signs or appears on the filing. Local counsel, supervising attorneys, and co-counsel therefore canât assume that someone else has confirmed the accuracy of the citations, quotations, and legal arguments.\nThese lessons are especially important in IP litigation, where briefs often combine specialized precedent, technical records, expert submissions, and contributions from multiple firms or practice groups. That complexity can make plausible-sounding errors more difficult to detect. The consequences may also extend beyond sanctions: inaccurate authority or unsupported technical assertions can damage counselâs credibility, weaken a partyâs substantive position, and affect the courtâs willingness to permit further amendment.\nAny brief that has multiple authors also runs the risk that a blanket prohibition on AI use by one practice group or firm will be insufficient. The prudent response therefore is to prioritize governance centered on verification, supervision, and accountability.\nPossible governance standards to consider include requiring internal disclosure of AI use to supervisors, confirming that each cited authority supports the stated proposition, assigning clear review responsibilities, and/or requiring substantive review by supervising and local counsel. The focus should be on a reliable process that ensures accuracy, supervision, and accountability before filing.\nThis article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.\nAuthor Information\nGreg Lantier is a first chair trial lawyer and appellate advocate who is a partner at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on complex patent, trade secret, copyright, breach of contract, and intellectual property licensing disputes that sit at the intersection of law, technology, and business strategy.\nLiv Herriot is counsel at Sidley Austin who represents and advises companies in high-stakes patent litigation and other complex intellectual property disputes, with a focus on protecting innovation and managing intellectual property risk.\nRaneem Eter is an associate at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on patent litigation, drawing on her background in biology, chemistry, and the biotechnology industry.\nGilbert Smolenski contributed to this article.\nInterested in writing? Review our author guidelines and submit pitches to Insights@bloombergindustry.com.\nLearn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:\nSee Breaking News in Context\nBloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis.\nAlready a subscriber?\nLog in to keep reading or access research tools and resources.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339,"usable_text_length":7224,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339}},"tags":[]},"fallback_formats":["markdown","json","html"],"actions":{"read":"/item/50461","export_markdown":"/api/items/50461/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/50461/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation"},"formats":{"full":{"id":50461,"title":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation - Bloomberg Law News","url":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","source":"Bloomberg Law News","author":null,"published_at":"2026-07-31T08:30:00+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"excerpt":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation. Recent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations.","full_text":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation.\nRecent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations. Critically, courts extend liability to all signing attorneys, so one attorneyâs unverified AI use can put an entire team at risk.\nThe practical response isnât to ban AI but to verify every citation against the primary source before filing and to assign clear responsibility for that verification.\nWhile the common thread across these decisions is Rule 11, which applies to all federal litigation, the guidance is especially worth underscoring for IP litigators, whose filings tend to rely on dense, doctrine-specific authority and detailed technical descriptions, the kind of material where AI hallucinations are both easy to introduce and easy to overlook.\nThe Cases\nEach decision below draws out a Rule 11 lesson: the duty to verify cited authority, its reach across every attorney who signs a filing, and the consequences when AI-tainted filings compound other defects.\nHernandez v. Lopez, a trademark dispute, sets the baseline: âWhile the Court does not prohibit counsel from using generative AI tools, counsel must comply with Rule 11(b), including confirmation that cases cited within a brief exist.â After finding three cited authorities that âdo not appear to existâ and were âlikely hallucinated,â the court issued an order to show cause why sanctions shouldnât be imposed on the attorneys.\nLexos Media IP, LLC v. Overstock.com, Inc., a patent infringement action, found that all five attorneys whose names appeared on the briefs containing defective ChatGPT-generated authority violated Rule 11(b)(2)âeven though only one attorney had used ChatGPT and inserted the errors. Rule 11(b)(2) requires attorneys to certify that the legal contentions in a filing are supported by existing law or a non-frivolous argument for changing the law. The briefs contained fabricated quotations, non-existent citations, and materially misleading descriptions of legal authority generated through ChatGPT.\nThe court held that responsibility wasnât limited to the attorney who inserted and failed to verify the defective material. Each attorney listed in the signature block had a nondelegable duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the cited authorities before signing or filing the briefs.\nAll five attorneys were publicly admonished for allowing their names to appear on filings that hadnât been reasonably verified. The additional sanctions tracked each attorneyâs role and degree of fault. The attorney who used ChatGPT and inserted the hallucinated authorityâand failed to disclose that use to anyone in the firm, co-counsel, or the clientâreceived the most severe sanctions: a $5,000 fine, loss of his pro hac vice status, mandatory self-reporting to disciplinary authorities, and new internal verification requirements for future filings. The two senior attorneys and local counsel received smaller fines. The firmâs managing member was also ordered to implement and certify accuracy procedures for future filings. The court further emphasized that local counsel adds credibility to a filing and must independently confirm its accuracy.\nA third decision, Meril and Keith Dillard v. CBS Studios, Inc., highlights another important risk: errors in AI-assisted filings may cause a court to conclude that amending a complaint would be futile. In this copyright action, the court found that the pro se plaintiffâs submissions included mischaracterizations of the defendantâs conduct and prior court orders, a supplemental briefing containing apparently AI-generated images, and an opposition brief citing several nonexistent opinions. Because pro se parties are also bound by the Rule 11 duty to confirm that cited authorities exist and support their propositions, the court dismissed with prejudice, finding amendment would yield âadditional unsupported allegationsâ and more defective filings rather than curing the complaintâs deficiencies.\nPractical Takeaways\nTaken together, these decisions illustrate that the principal risk isnât the use of AI itself, but the failure to verify and supervise AI-assisted work. The duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry doesnât rest solely with the attorney who used the tool or inserted the material. It extends to every attorney who signs or appears on the filing. Local counsel, supervising attorneys, and co-counsel therefore canât assume that someone else has confirmed the accuracy of the citations, quotations, and legal arguments.\nThese lessons are especially important in IP litigation, where briefs often combine specialized precedent, technical records, expert submissions, and contributions from multiple firms or practice groups. That complexity can make plausible-sounding errors more difficult to detect. The consequences may also extend beyond sanctions: inaccurate authority or unsupported technical assertions can damage counselâs credibility, weaken a partyâs substantive position, and affect the courtâs willingness to permit further amendment.\nAny brief that has multiple authors also runs the risk that a blanket prohibition on AI use by one practice group or firm will be insufficient. The prudent response therefore is to prioritize governance centered on verification, supervision, and accountability.\nPossible governance standards to consider include requiring internal disclosure of AI use to supervisors, confirming that each cited authority supports the stated proposition, assigning clear review responsibilities, and/or requiring substantive review by supervising and local counsel. The focus should be on a reliable process that ensures accuracy, supervision, and accountability before filing.\nThis article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.\nAuthor Information\nGreg Lantier is a first chair trial lawyer and appellate advocate who is a partner at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on complex patent, trade secret, copyright, breach of contract, and intellectual property licensing disputes that sit at the intersection of law, technology, and business strategy.\nLiv Herriot is counsel at Sidley Austin who represents and advises companies in high-stakes patent litigation and other complex intellectual property disputes, with a focus on protecting innovation and managing intellectual property risk.\nRaneem Eter is an associate at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on patent litigation, drawing on her background in biology, chemistry, and the biotechnology industry.\nGilbert Smolenski contributed to this article.\nInterested in writing? Review our author guidelines and submit pitches to Insights@bloombergindustry.com.\nLearn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:\nSee Breaking News in Context\nBloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis.\nAlready a subscriber?\nLog in to keep reading or access research tools and resources.","reading_time_min":5,"extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339,"usable_text_length":7224,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339}}},"quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339,"usable_text_length":7224,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339}},"actions":{"read":"/item/50461","export_markdown":"/api/items/50461/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/50461/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation"}},"digest":{"id":50461,"title":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation - Bloomberg Law News","url":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","source":"Bloomberg Law News","topic":"ai","published_at":"2026-07-31T08:30:00+00:00","excerpt":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation. Recent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers…","quality_bucket":"high","quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","reading_time_min":5,"cluster_id":null},"card":{"display_title":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation - Bloomberg Law News","subtitle":"Bloomberg Law News · 2026-07-31","summary":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation. Recent IP decisions send a consistent message:…","badges":["quality:high"],"links":{"read":"/item/50461","original":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation"},"quality_warning":null},"export":{"title":"Courts Set Clear Standards for How Lawyers Use AI in Litigation - Bloomberg Law News","url":"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","summary":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation. Recent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations.","source":"Bloomberg Law News","date":"2026-07-31T08:30:00+00:00","content":"As generative artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into legal practice, courts are articulating clearer standards governing its use in litigation.\nRecent IP decisions send a consistent message: Federal courts wonât prohibit AI use, but theyâll sanction lawyers who use AI tools without meeting their ethical obligations. Critically, courts extend liability to all signing attorneys, so one attorneyâs unverified AI use can put an entire team at risk.\nThe practical response isnât to ban AI but to verify every citation against the primary source before filing and to assign clear responsibility for that verification.\nWhile the common thread across these decisions is Rule 11, which applies to all federal litigation, the guidance is especially worth underscoring for IP litigators, whose filings tend to rely on dense, doctrine-specific authority and detailed technical descriptions, the kind of material where AI hallucinations are both easy to introduce and easy to overlook.\nThe Cases\nEach decision below draws out a Rule 11 lesson: the duty to verify cited authority, its reach across every attorney who signs a filing, and the consequences when AI-tainted filings compound other defects.\nHernandez v. Lopez, a trademark dispute, sets the baseline: âWhile the Court does not prohibit counsel from using generative AI tools, counsel must comply with Rule 11(b), including confirmation that cases cited within a brief exist.â After finding three cited authorities that âdo not appear to existâ and were âlikely hallucinated,â the court issued an order to show cause why sanctions shouldnât be imposed on the attorneys.\nLexos Media IP, LLC v. Overstock.com, Inc., a patent infringement action, found that all five attorneys whose names appeared on the briefs containing defective ChatGPT-generated authority violated Rule 11(b)(2)âeven though only one attorney had used ChatGPT and inserted the errors. Rule 11(b)(2) requires attorneys to certify that the legal contentions in a filing are supported by existing law or a non-frivolous argument for changing the law. The briefs contained fabricated quotations, non-existent citations, and materially misleading descriptions of legal authority generated through ChatGPT.\nThe court held that responsibility wasnât limited to the attorney who inserted and failed to verify the defective material. Each attorney listed in the signature block had a nondelegable duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the cited authorities before signing or filing the briefs.\nAll five attorneys were publicly admonished for allowing their names to appear on filings that hadnât been reasonably verified. The additional sanctions tracked each attorneyâs role and degree of fault. The attorney who used ChatGPT and inserted the hallucinated authorityâand failed to disclose that use to anyone in the firm, co-counsel, or the clientâreceived the most severe sanctions: a $5,000 fine, loss of his pro hac vice status, mandatory self-reporting to disciplinary authorities, and new internal verification requirements for future filings. The two senior attorneys and local counsel received smaller fines. The firmâs managing member was also ordered to implement and certify accuracy procedures for future filings. The court further emphasized that local counsel adds credibility to a filing and must independently confirm its accuracy.\nA third decision, Meril and Keith Dillard v. CBS Studios, Inc., highlights another important risk: errors in AI-assisted filings may cause a court to conclude that amending a complaint would be futile. In this copyright action, the court found that the pro se plaintiffâs submissions included mischaracterizations of the defendantâs conduct and prior court orders, a supplemental briefing containing apparently AI-generated images, and an opposition brief citing several nonexistent opinions. Because pro se parties are also bound by the Rule 11 duty to confirm that cited authorities exist and support their propositions, the court dismissed with prejudice, finding amendment would yield âadditional unsupported allegationsâ and more defective filings rather than curing the complaintâs deficiencies.\nPractical Takeaways\nTaken together, these decisions illustrate that the principal risk isnât the use of AI itself, but the failure to verify and supervise AI-assisted work. The duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry doesnât rest solely with the attorney who used the tool or inserted the material. It extends to every attorney who signs or appears on the filing. Local counsel, supervising attorneys, and co-counsel therefore canât assume that someone else has confirmed the accuracy of the citations, quotations, and legal arguments.\nThese lessons are especially important in IP litigation, where briefs often combine specialized precedent, technical records, expert submissions, and contributions from multiple firms or practice groups. That complexity can make plausible-sounding errors more difficult to detect. The consequences may also extend beyond sanctions: inaccurate authority or unsupported technical assertions can damage counselâs credibility, weaken a partyâs substantive position, and affect the courtâs willingness to permit further amendment.\nAny brief that has multiple authors also runs the risk that a blanket prohibition on AI use by one practice group or firm will be insufficient. The prudent response therefore is to prioritize governance centered on verification, supervision, and accountability.\nPossible governance standards to consider include requiring internal disclosure of AI use to supervisors, confirming that each cited authority supports the stated proposition, assigning clear review responsibilities, and/or requiring substantive review by supervising and local counsel. The focus should be on a reliable process that ensures accuracy, supervision, and accountability before filing.\nThis article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.\nAuthor Information\nGreg Lantier is a first chair trial lawyer and appellate advocate who is a partner at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on complex patent, trade secret, copyright, breach of contract, and intellectual property licensing disputes that sit at the intersection of law, technology, and business strategy.\nLiv Herriot is counsel at Sidley Austin who represents and advises companies in high-stakes patent litigation and other complex intellectual property disputes, with a focus on protecting innovation and managing intellectual property risk.\nRaneem Eter is an associate at Sidley Austin whose practice focuses on patent litigation, drawing on her background in biology, chemistry, and the biotechnology industry.\nGilbert Smolenski contributed to this article.\nInterested in writing? Review our author guidelines and submit pitches to Insights@bloombergindustry.com.\nLearn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:\nSee Breaking News in Context\nBloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis.\nAlready a subscriber?\nLog in to keep reading or access research tools and resources.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/courts-set-clear-standards-for-how-lawyers-use-ai-in-litigation","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 7224 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339,"usable_text_length":7224,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":7224,"summary_length":339}},"tags":[],"format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1"}}}