Three of the private attorneys representing Alabama’s prison system have been publicly reprimanded by a federal judge for using fake legal citations.
The scathing order said lawyers Matthew Reeves, William Cranford and William Lunsford filed court records with citations that were “hallucinations” from Chat GPT, the popular generative artificial intelligence app.
“In simpler terms, the citations were completely made up,” wrote U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco on Wednesday.
The judge publicly reprimanded the lawyers and kicked them off the case, where they were representing the Alabama Department of Corrections over an inmate’s lawsuit. The lawyers will still be allowed to represent the prison system in other cases, including the lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice in 2020, although Reeves withdrew from that case several months ago.
She ordered the lawyers to provide a copy of the sanctions order to all of their clients, opposing lawyers, and judges in every case they’re working on. They were also ordered to give the order to every attorney in their law office, Butler Snow, a prestigious national law firm. The three lawyers sanctioned work in the Huntsville office.
Wednesday’s sanctions order will also be published in a federal legal publication.
“Fabricating legal authority is serious misconduct that demands a serious sanction,” wrote Manasco in her order on Wednesday. “In the court’s view, it demands substantially greater accountability than the reprimands and modest fines that have become common as courts confront this form of AI misuse.”
She also slammed the Alabama Department of Corrections for continuing to employ the attorneys. “And in any event, they have little effect when the lawyer’s client (here, an Alabama government agency) learns of the attorney’s misconduct and continues to retain him.”
Lunsford has represented the prison system for over two decades and has been designated a deputy Alabama Attorney General. The state has paid him $42 million for his services since 2020, according to state records, and is slated to pay out more.
The fake citations were used in a case that was originally filed in 2021 by an inmate at Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer. The inmate was stabbed multiple times in 2019 and 2020, according to his lawsuit.
The fake citations first came to light in May when an attorney for the inmate filed a motion questioning the references. At the time, Manasco tried to do her own searches for the citations but couldn’t find them. She ordered the Butler Snow attorneys to show why they shouldn’t be punished “for making false statements of fact or law to the court.”
In a filing on May 19, Lunsford explained what happened. “In short,” he explained, “attorney Matt Reeves used ChatGPT to obtain case citations in support of two arguments made in the motions at issue without verifying their accuracy, and those citations proved to be false.”
Lunsford said his team “deeply regret(s)” the mistake.
“It is unacceptable, embarrassing, and does not reflect the high regard we have for the Court, the judicial system, and all parties and counsel of record. We sincerely apologize to everyone involved.”
The judge said lawyers at Butler Snow should have known better, and she would be sending the issue to the Alabama State Bar.
“Even in cases like this one, where lawyers who cite AI hallucinations accept responsibility and apologize profusely, much damage is done,” wrote Manasco.
“This is recklessness in the extreme, and it is tantamount to bad faith,” she added.
Lunsford told the judge that the AI use was a “lapse in judgment, and we will do everything within our power to make sure it never happens again.”
In a declaration Lunsford submitted, he said the made up citations “do not reflect the nature or quality of work that I have worked for decades to ensure that every client receives.”
Lunsford has long represented the prison system, including in the lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice in 2020 over unconstitutional prison conditions and the excessive sexual and physical violence that happens inside.
Lunsford said the ChatGPT incident included “terrible decisions that led to an erroneous filing. We will ensure that this never occurs again.”
He said that when the motion with the fake citations was written in May, he was looped in via email from the two other lawyers on the case—but at the time, he said, he was inside a prison with “limited cell connectivity.” The other lawyers, Reeves and Cranford, filed the motion without his input.
Lunsford said he wasn’t aware of any of the attorneys in the firm using AI to prepare legal filings.
In his declaration, Reeves admitted the error. “In my haste to finalize the motions and get them filed, I failed to verify the case citations returned by ChatGPT through independent review in Westlaw or PACER before including them,” in their motion.
“I sincerely regret this lapse in diligence and judgment. I take full responsibility,” he said. “I relied on the AI-generated output without confirming that the citations were valid and applicable.”
“From this point forward, I will take whatever time necessary to ensure a thorough review of all filings for citation accuracy and reliability. I will never cite to legal authority without verifying its accuracy (with or without artificial intelligence), as has been my practice prior to these events.”
In her Wednesday order, the judge explained why she thought hefty sanctions were necessary. “As a practical matter, time is telling us – quickly and loudly – that (fines) are insufficient deterrents. In principle, they do not account for the danger that fake citations pose for the fair administration of justice and the integrity of the judicial system.”
In a declaration submitted in court records last month, Lunsford said he has never used any publicly accessible AI, including ChatGPT. In Cranford’s declaration, he said he had never used any publicly available AI, either.
In his declaration, Reeves said he’s never used Chat GPT for legal filings, except in this instance. He said after a court hearing on the issue, he’s been in talks with the University of Alabama’s law school professors to create a program to teach students on the risks of AI.
Butler Snow, the firm where the three reprimanded lawyers work, did a review of their other cases to make sure there were no other AI-generated citations or other issues. The firm reviewed 52 federal court cases, according to the judge’s order, and didn’t find any similar problems.
The firm also asked an independent group to do their own evaluation, and the group didn’t find any similar issues, either. Butler Snow incurred that cost, and didn’t bill the state.
As for Lunsford, the only attorney of the three to have a special deputy Alabama Attorney General designation, Manasco wrote:
“To be clear, the court’s finding in this regard is not simply a harsh inference: when it became apparent that multiple motions with his name in the signature block contained fabricated citations, Mr. Lunsford’s nearly immediate response was to try to skip the show cause hearing and leave the mess for someone else. And when the court compelled him to appear at the hearing, he paired his apology with an explanation in greater fullness of how very little work he personally puts in to be sure that his team’s motions tell the truth.”
“This cannot be how litigators, particularly seasoned ones, practice in federal court or run their teams.”
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