In Fletcher v. Experian Inform. Solutions, Inc., No. 25-20086 (5th Cir. Feb. 18, 2026), the Fifth Circuit enters a $2,500 sanction against a lawyer who filed a brief with “quotations, citations, and assertions that were not supported by the underlying case law” and were, to all appearances, AI-generated. The opinion drops some hints about what to do when you learn that your brief has AI hallucinations.

The panel notes to its regret that the Fifth Circuit considered but declined to adopt standards about the use of AI in drafting papers filed on appeal. Nevertheless, it was concluded “that existing rules were sufficient to deter misconduct related to generative AI use, without the need for a rule specific to generative AI. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 46(c), for instance, allows a court of appeals, after notice and an opportunity to show cause, to ‘discipline an attorney who practices before it for conduct unbecoming a member of the bar or for failure to comply with any court rule.’ We also have ‘inherent power to impose sanctions for abuse of the judicial process.’”

Despite numerous high-profile instances of courts criticizing and imposing sanctions on lawyers who use AI heedlessly in legal drafting, “[i]t is a problem that is getting worse—not better. If it were ever an excuse to plead ignorance of the risks of using generative AI to draft a brief without verifying its output, it is certainly no longer so. To ethically use generative AI in the practice of law—which we do not dispute can be helpful if done properly and carefully—a lawyer must ‘ensure that the legal propositions and authority generated are trustworthy.’”

In the case at bar, the lawyer allegedly filed a reply brief in the Fifth Circuit with sixteen “instances of fabricated quotations and [five] additional serious misrepresentations of law or fact.” The court issued a show-cause order directing the lawyer “explain whether and how [they] verified the accuracy of the propositions in [their] brief.” After reportedly denying that the lawyer used AI at all, the explanation shifted to that the lawyer “relied on publicly available versions of the cases, which [they] believed were accurate.”

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The Fifth Circuit ticks through what went wrong and suggests what the lawyer’s correct response ought to have been.

1.  When the lawyer first became aware of the errors, they “should have immediately alerted the court and sought leave to file a correct brief.”

2. The lawyer should have immediately and candidly owned up to the use of AI, instead of deflecting. The lawyer claimed to have relied “several well-known legal databases” – Google Scholar, CourtListener, Justia, FindLaw – though on investigation, none of them contained the errors found in the lawyer’s brief. The lawyer also claimed to have innocently relied on “paraphrased summaries” of cases, which the lawyer claimed to have “mistakenly believed . . . reflected the actual language of the cases.” Yet the court “put tremendous effort into attempting to find where these summaries could be located and [were] unable to find them.”

3. Always be prepared to demonstrate how you did a human check on AI-generated work product. When the lawyer “finally admitted to the use of AI,” they claimed it was solely to “help organize and structure [they] arguments and to break up overly long paragraphs.” But the lawyer never explained what precautions they took to double-check for errors, including (as it turned out) erroneous record cites.

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The panel holds sanctions were warranted under Fed. R. App. P. 46(c) for “conduct unbecoming a member of the bar or for failure to comply with any court rule,” and the court’s “inherent power to impose sanctions for abuse of the judicial process.”

“[Counsel] used artificial generative intelligence to draft a substantial portion—if not all—of [the] reply brief and failed to check the brief for accuracy. It is also likely that [counsel] used artificial generative intelligence in . . . response to the show-cause order. Had [counsel] accepted responsibility and been more forthcoming, it is likely that the court would have imposed lesser sanctions. However, when confronted with a serious ethical misstep, [counsel] misled, evaded, and violated [their] duties as an officer of this court.”