Judge considers sanctions against attorneys in prison case for using AI in court filings

Key Points

• U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco is considering sanctions, including fines, against Butler Snow attorneys after ChatGPT-generated court filings in an Alabama prison case cited five nonexistent cases.
• Firm partner Matt Reeves admitted he used AI to research legal authority without verifying it, resulting in “hallucinated” citations that were signed off by four attorneys.
• Judge Manasco gave the firm 10 days to file a brief and heard apologies from Butler Snow lawyers, who said using AI without verification violated firm policy.
• The challenged filings were in a lawsuit by an inmate stabbed multiple times at Donaldson Correctional Facility, part of Alabama’s million-dollar defense work on prison condition lawsuits.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala, (AP) — A federal judge said Wednesday that she is considering sanctions against lawyers with a high-priced firm hired to defend Alabama’s prison system after ChatGPT was used to write two court filings that included nonexistent case citations.

U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco held a hearing in Birmingham to question attorneys with the Butler Snow firm about the filings. She said there were five false citations in two filings in federal court. Manasco said that nationally, there have been broad warnings from courts about the use of artificial intelligence to generate legal filings because of the potential for inaccuracies.

Manasco said she is considering a range of sanctions, including fines. She gave the firm 10 days to file a brief with the court.

Butler Snow lawyers repeatedly apologized during the hearing.

They said a firm partner, Matt Reeves, used ChatGPT to research supporting case law but did not verify the information before adding it to two filings with the federal court. Those citations turned out to be “hallucinations” — meaning incorrect citations — by the AI system, they said. Four attorneys signed the filings with the information, including Reeves.

“Butler Snow is embarrassed by what happened here, which was against good judgment and firm policy. There is no excuse for using ChatGPT to obtain legal authority and failing to verify the sources it provided, even if to support well founded principles of law,” firm lawyers wrote in a response to the judge.

Reeves told the judge that he alone was responsible for the false citations and that, “I would hope your honor would not punish my colleagues.”

Alabama has paid millions of dollars to the firm to defend the state prison system and its officials in lawsuits. That includes representing the state as a defendant in a Department of Justice lawsuit alleging that male inmates live in violent and cruel conditions.

The filings in question were made in a lawsuit filed by an inmate who was stabbed on multiple occasions at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County. It alleges that prison officials are failing to keep inmates safe.

Manasco also questioned Bill Lunsford, head of the Butler Snow division that handles prison litigation, who signed the filings. Alabama's attorney general has appointed Lunsford as a deputy attorney general because he represents the state in court.

Lunsford wrote in a response to the judge that he scanned over the documents before filing them but did not do a detailed review since it had been reviewed by Reeves. He told the judge that the firm has been proactive in warning lawyers about the limitations of artificial intelligence.