Notes from the verification layer.
Short pieces on pre-filing citation verification, Verification Certificates, and the discipline a firm adds when its drafting workflow now includes generative tools.
Rule 11 and Generative AI: What Sanctioning Judges Have Actually Said About the Duty of Inquiry
A close reading of the sanctions opinions focused on the Rule 11(b)(2) language each court relied on. Courts are not punishing AI use. They are punishing the absence of a verification step.
The Best Model Anthropic Has Shipped Still Hallucinates. Here Is What the System Card Says.
Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 with the best knowledge-and-hallucination benchmark on record, a 40 out of 100. The 319-page system card still documents residual error, and in some tests the new models hallucinate more than the older Opus. For a filed brief, the residual is the whole problem. Why a better model does not lower the verification duty, and the discipline layer that makes AI-assisted drafting defensible.
What a Hedged Verdict Actually Means: The Verification Status Taxonomy
The verdict states a scanner can return, and why hedged verdicts matter more than binary ones. A confident wrong answer is the failure mode that sanctioned the Mata lawyers.
Anatomy of a Hallucination: Park v. Kim and the Second Circuit Referral
The second sanctions case in the canonical sequence. A pro se attorney, lower stakes, the same mechanism as Mata. Line-by-line on the failure mode the audit layer was built for.
Florida Rule 2.515: The New AI Citation Certification Effective June 15
Effective June 15, 2026, every signer of a Florida court filing represents that the legal authorities cited exist and are accurately cited. One statewide standard replaces the patchwork of trial-court AI orders. What the representation asks, what is exposed when it fails, and the pre-filing verification step that satisfies it.
Federal Judge AI Standing Orders: A Working Inventory and What They Actually Require
What published AI standing orders actually demand, grouped by requirement: disclosure, certification of verification, prohibition. The operational answer to the certification requirement.
Anatomy of a Hallucination: Mata v. Avianca and the Citations That Did Not Exist
Mata v. Avianca is the canonical example of an AI-hallucinated citation reaching a federal docket. A line-by-line look at what the brief cited, what could not be located in the reporter, and what a pre-filing verification step would have surfaced.
The Pre-Filing Verification Step That Catches What Westlaw Does Not
Research platforms assume the cited case exists. A pre-filing citation check confirms it before the brief leaves the firm. Here is what the audit layer does that research platforms do not.
What a Verification Certificate Contains (And Why It Belongs in the Matter File)
The anatomy of a Verification Certificate: hashed content, public token URL, hedged verdicts, and the matter-file artifact that malpractice underwriters look for.