Verifying the Machine: Catching AI Hallucinations in Your Briefs and Your Opponent’s

This session equips attorneys with a structured, six-step verification protocol for AI-generated legal research, covering citation existence, holding accuracy, quotation fidelity, and subsequent history. Attendees will learn how leading AI tools—including legal-specific platforms—fail, what the current sanctions landscape requires of them, and how to build a defensible, documented workflow before any AI-assisted brief leaves the office. Attorneys completing this session will be able to identify the specific failure modes of generative AI in legal research, apply a repeatable pre-filing checklist, and select the right verification tools for their practice.

This session equips litigators to identify fabricated or distorted AI-generated authority in opposing briefs, select the correct sanctions vehicle, and execute the procedural steps that follow discovery of a hallucination. Attorneys will learn the red flags that distinguish genuine AI confabulation from ordinary citation error, the Rule 11, § 1927, and inherent-power frameworks courts have applied, and how local AI-disclosure rules create compounding liability. Attendees leave with a replicable litigation playbook — from the first suspicious citation through a sanctions motion or bar referral.