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AI in Court

Lawyers' Responsibility for Hallucinations in Briefs That They Sign

Eugene Volokh | 9.4.2026 12:12 PM

An interesting perspective from D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Glickman concurring in Douglas v. Deutsche Bank Nat'l Trust Co. (more on that case here):

The panel opinion, which I join, states that "every attorney who signed the brief bears some responsibility" for inclusion of fake citations. I agree with that general principle, subject to a clarification as to what I think it must entail. The opinion also quotes, with evident approval, the Ninth Circuit's declaration that "[a] competent and diligent attorney cannot decline to 'vet' citations, in a brief he signs, for substantive validity—in other words, to read the cited authorities and ensure that they are on point." In the appeal that the Ninth Circuit had before it, there was only one signatory on the brief in question.

If the quoted statement is understood to mean that every signatory on any brief with multiple signatories must personally check every citation in the brief for accuracy, I demur….

Preliminarily, the term "signatory" may be misleading. Appellate briefs commonly list the names of multiple attorneys for the party on whose behalf the briefs are submitted. Ordinarily, only one of those attorneys actually signs the brief. For present purposes, though, all the named attorneys are deemed to be "signatories" who stand behind and who (usually, but not always) contributed to the brief. (It is not unreasonable for a brief to list the attorneys who represent the party in the appeal even if they did not personally contribute to the brief or were........

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