MESSAGE SENT: Court Ruling Annihaltes McGuire Woods and Sends a Clear Message to Any Firm (Or In house Counsel) That Thinks GenAI has Any Place in the Law

Every time I hear about a GC demanding outside counsel use AI to cut costs I laugh and think “that guy/gal ain’t going to be around too long.”

Anyone rushing to use AI in the legal field is going to get absolutely destroyed in court and fired from an inhouse role. Just a matter of time.

Those who say otherwise are selling something.

The only lawyers using AI are bad lawyers. And those who advertise using AI in their practices are literally just admitting they’re bad at their jobs.

And rather than provide wise counsel to their clients the most GOOD lawyers are doing is avoiding AI– when they should be doing what I do and ACTIVELY ADVISING THEIR CLIENTS AGAINST AI.

There’s a reason I’m the most expensive attorney in the country and they’re not.

Its not just that I’m smarter/better/more capable, etc. in the courtroom– there’s that too– but its that I have the JUDGMENT and WISDOM to know a dangerous fad when I see one.

And so do the federal courts.

Consider the remarkable case of Ringer v. Bank of America, 1:25-cv-03959-SEG  (N.D. GA Dec. 4, 2025).

There a lawyer at a supposedly reputable #biglaw firm– McGuire Woods LLP (truly the WORST of the bunch IMO) filed a brief in a case against a PRO PER containing a ton of fake cites.

Let’s just pause there for a second.

Bank of America hired a big law firm to fight against a lady with NO LAWYER and the results was a supposedly well-qualified #biglaw attorney filing a brief full of fake cites.

INSANE.

Obviously the court assumed it was AI mischief at work but apparently it wasn’t. According to the lawyer he literally just wrote down the information wrong from his notes.

Pause again.

What the hell?

A lawyer at a #biglaw firm just sent fake cases to the court because he couldn’t properly read/recite his own notes? And then NOBODY CAUGHT IT?

At Troutman Amin, LLP EVERY brief we submit is reviewed multiple times by junior and more senior level attorneys and is generally also cite-checked by a paralegal. And if the brief is a major filing we will even bring in Puja J. Amin herself to review the brief before submission– and she catches everything.

But at McGuire Woods, apparently lawyers just clack out garbage briefs from handwritten notes and submit the filing without review.

Just a joke. Anyone paying for #biglaw is just asking to get hammered.

But I digresss.

The point here is that AI sucks not that #biglaw sucks– although… yeah.

So in Ringer even though AI was not actually the problem (apparently) the court still wanted to “send a message” to lawyers who would foolishly choose to use AI (and to inhouse counsel who would foolishly elect outside litigation counsel that use AI). It wrote thusly:

In other words, the Court must be concerned with the message sent to other lawyers, firms and non represented parties as to the consequences of cutting corners, by using tools such as ChatGPT or even AI modules offered by reputable legal research databases without adequate care, or otherwise failing to verify the accuracy of citations and assertions in legal filings. Allowing this issue to pass with nothing more than an Order to Show Cause might fail to send that message. 

So even though this case had nothing to do with AI mistakes (allegedly) the court needed to make sure all the lawyers out there using AI understood such mistakes would not be tolerated. This makes sense since:

Unfortunately, the age of artificial intelligence has greatly increased the
prevalence of false legal and factual assertions in legal submissions. This is a
tremendous threat, as it erodes confidence in the judicial system and bogs the Courts
and practitioners down in policing citations to a far greater extent than had
previously been the case. AI may not ultimately have been at the core of the errors
submitted here. But Courts must take careless citation errors even more seriously in
the current environment to send the necessary message of deterrence to the legal
community and unrepresented parties.

It goes on to sanction the lawyer and also required the law firm to come forward and explain itself:

In particular, the undersigned was surprised that a large law firm such as
McGuire Woods did not already have paralegals, more junior lawyers, or other staff
cite-checking submissions, and that an Order to Show Cause from a federal judge
was required for such a commonplace step to be implemented in this case.

Well done.

Take aways here are clear:

1. Only losers use AI for legal briefing;
2. Don’t use #biglaw (or at least McGuire Woods)– its a joke. NO oversight.

Quality counsel–who doesn’t use AI– is available folks. Troutman Amin, LLP is known as the “best TCPA law firm in the country” for a reason. No lawyers at our firm have EVER been sanctioned. We don’t mess around. We don’t cut corners. We take the practice of law seriously– every day.

Chat soon.