* Credit for identifying the error in the Fifth Circuit’s notice belongs to Utsav Gupta, a Stanford master’s candidate and summer NLR-Wickard Legal AI Pathways Fellow.

Over the past three years, much of the legal profession’s attention to AI ethics has focused on lawyers filing documents with fabricated citations. But judges make citation errors, too. In one particularly ironic example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an official notice warning lawyers to verify the accuracy of their filings, then cited the wrong rule itself.

The notice came amid growing concern about lawyers’ and litigants’ misuse of generative AI. The number of recorded instances of litigants filing erroneous authorities has exceeded 2,046 cases worldwide, including 1,397 in the United States. Financial consequences have even exceeded $100,000 in a single matter.

Some courts have responded with standing orders and certification rules requiring parties to verify the accuracy of AI-generated material before filing. Most recently, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a proposed rule requiring human verification of AI-generated materials, with a planned effective date of January 1, 2027.

The Fifth Circuit considered a similar approach in 2024. Its proposal would have required counsel and unrepresented litigants to certify either that they had not used generative AI to draft a filing or that a human had reviewed and approved the generated material, including citations and legal analysis.

In June 2024, the court declined to adopt the proposal. Its official notice instead emphasized existing duties to check filings for truthfulness and accuracy. It concluded: “‘I used AI’ will not be an excuse for an otherwise sanctionable offense.”

The authority cited for those duties was Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 6(b)(1)(B).

But that was an incorrect citation. That provision concerns notice-of-appeal forms in certain bankruptcy appeals. It does not establish the professional-conduct obligation the notice appears to invoke.

The intended reference appears to have been Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 46(b)(1)(B), which permits suspension or disbarment for conduct unbecoming a member of the court’s bar. An apparently missing digit changed the subject from attorney discipline to bankruptcy procedure.

ABOVE: Full reproduction of the Fifth Circuit's official notice (link)

The Fifth Circuit’s later decision in Fletcher v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc. supports that interpretation. In February 2026, the court discussed Rules 46(b)(1)(B) and 46(c) while revisiting its decision against adopting the AI proposal. It sanctioned counsel $2,500 for conduct involving unverified AI-generated briefing and a lack of candor in responding to the court. The opinion did not expressly correct the earlier notice.

The incorrect citation also appeared in subsequent commentary. King & Spalding reproduced the notice and incorporated the bankruptcy provision into its analysis. Another judge likewise referenced it when discussing lawyers’ duties.

Accurately reporting a court’s language, of course, does not make commentators responsible for originating its error. These examples nevertheless illustrate how an incorrect citation can spread because readers reasonably trust its judicial source.

More than two years after publication, the incorrect citation remains on the court’s website.

There is no evidence that AI caused the Fifth Circuit’s mistake. A typographical error in an administrative notice also differs materially from fabricated authorities used to decide a case. The incident nevertheless illustrates why careful citation checking is necessary even when the source is a court.

Courts demand accuracy from lawyers. That commitment must extend to the bench as well.