The AI MessOpposing counsel just filed AI slop.
The tells that a filing is AI slop, how to check its citations, and what has happened to lawyers who filed fabricated ones.
The symptom, as lawyers describe it
What it looks like
A filing lands from the other side, the kind the chatbot clearly had a hand in.
A little too polished in places, a little too generic in others.
You cannot act on a hunch. You need to know which citations are real before you respond to any of it.
What lawyers complain about
Quotes are verbatim public posts by practitioners, reproduced without attribution to the individual.
Seven tells of AI slop:
- Formatting giveaways: tables that keep the same format, and a font that never changes to match the sender's usual style. Source
- Confident assertions with no citations, just "the law says." Source
- Fabricated or garbled case citations and statute quotes, what one litigator called "fugazis." Source
- Grammatical patterns an experienced reader learns to flag as AI-written. Source
- Vocabulary that does not match how the client or the other party actually talks. Source
- The same uniform bullet-point structure repeated across unrelated filings. Source
- Length that does not match the content, seven paragraphs where three sentences would do. Source
The record
Two real cases where the other side's citations did not hold, 2023 to 2026
| Case | Court and date | What happened | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mata v. Avianca, Inc. | S.D.N.Y., Jun 22, 2023 | Attorneys submitted a brief citing six fabricated cases, then produced fake opinion excerpts when challenged. | $5,000 fine plus required letters to the client and to each judge falsely named as an author. |
| Whiting v. City of Athens, Tennessee | 6th Cir., Mar 13, 2026 | Consolidated appellate briefs contained more than two dozen fake or misrepresented citations and record misstatements. | $15,000 punitive fine against each attorney, full appellate attorney fees, double costs, and a disciplinary referral. |
The fix, concretely
What changes
Cite Check checks identified legal citations against available legal sources and surfaces citation and treatment information for attorney review. A successful match does not establish that an authority supports a particular proposition; attorneys should review the underlying authority before relying on it.
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