Sanctions watch

“the worst example of misconduct by a lawyer that I think I’ve ever seen since I’ve been on the bench.”

““as a warning””

“Attorney Gottlieb did not have a dishonest or selfish motive, he cooperated with the disciplinary process by honestly and forthrightly responding to our requests seeking further information and understanding regarding the erroneous citations, he admitted his mistake, he showed sincere contrition, and he has no disciplinary history.”

“We do not know why attorney Cole feels compelled to rush out obviously flawed filings, but this must stop.”

“{¶133} This case illustrates the peril. An attorney who, by his own counsel’s admission, was sophisticated in his understanding of AI tools permitted a non-attorney staff member to use a public generative AI platform to prepare an appellate filing. The AI tool fabricated transcript quotations—attributing specific, inflammatory statements to a real prosecutor that were never spoken. The attorney filed the document without verifying its contents. When the fabrications were identified, he did not correct the record. He appealed this court’s denial of the tainted application to the Supreme Court of Ohio without disclosing the fabrications. He proffered an AI policy that itself appeared to have been generated by AI, complete with unfilled placeholder brackets. Two months after a sanctions hearing, a filing in another court bore the unmistakable hallmarks of unchecked AI output, including a ChatGPT prompt embedded in the text of a legal brief. {¶134} This court does not write to condemn the use of artificial intelligence in the practice of law. To the contrary, this court recognizes that AI is an inevitable and potentially beneficial feature of modern legal practice. But the use of AI does not relieve an attorney of any of the obligations imposed by the Rules of Professional Conduct, by the rules of court, or by the oath of admission to the bar. An attorney who files a document containing AI-generated content is responsible for that content, fully and without qualification. The duty to verify, the duty of candor, the duty of competence, and the duty of supervision cannot be delegated to a machine. {¶135} The sanctions imposed herein are proportionate, individually justified, and collectively designed to serve the purposes for which the court’s sanctioning authority exists: to compensate for harm, to deter future misconduct, to protect the integrity of the judicial process, to preserve public confidence in the administration of justice, and to ensure that the practice of law remains a profession grounded in truth, accuracy, and candor.”