Responding to an Order to Show Cause Over AI Citations
A good response to an order to show cause over AI citations does five things. It answers each question the court asked, admits plainly which citations were fabricated and how that happened, describes any AI use accurately, shows that every other authority in the brief has been checked again, and lays out concrete remedial steps. Courts have gone easier on lawyers who were candid and harder on those who were evasive.
Key takeaways
- Respond to the order the court actually wrote, not the one you would rather answer: in Fletcher v. Experian the Fifth Circuit asked counsel to explain whether and how she verified her brief, and it found her answers misleading.
- Mention AI use in your first response: leaving AI out of the initial answer was part of what led the Fifth Circuit to sanction counsel.
- Courts give credit for candor and remediation: when the District of Wyoming set lighter sanctions in Wadsworth v. Walmart, it pointed to counsel’s transparency, the withdrawn motions, the fees paid and the firm’s new safeguards.
- Acting in good faith does not fully protect you: the same court said Rule 11 sanctions do not require subjective bad faith.
- Each person who signs is responsible: Wadsworth called the Rule 11 duty nondelegable and sanctioned the drafter, the supervising attorney and local counsel alike.
- Check the whole brief again before you respond, so the response does not carry a second mistake of its own.
What is an order to show cause over AI citations?
It is an order from the court telling an attorney to explain why particular conduct, most often filing fabricated or misquoted authority, should not lead to sanctions. In federal district court the source is Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(c)(3), which says “On its own, the court may order an attorney, law firm, or party to show cause why conduct specifically described in the order has not violated Rule 11(b).”
The provision usually at issue is Rule 11(b)(2). By signing, a lawyer certifies that “the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument” for changing the law, and a case that does not exist cannot satisfy that. Rule 11(c)(1) also says sanctions come only “after notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond.” The show cause order is the notice, and your response is the opportunity.
Rule 11 is not the only basis courts use. In Wadsworth v. Walmart Inc., No. 2:23-CV-118-KHR (D. Wyo. Feb. 24, 2025), the court imposed its sanctions “pursuant to Rule 11 and the Court’s inherent authority.” In Fletcher v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc., No. 25-20086 (5th Cir. Feb. 18, 2026), the Fifth Circuit relied on Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 46(c) and its “inherent power to impose sanctions for abuse of the judicial process.” Check the order to see which authority your judge is relying on.
What should an order to show cause AI citations response include?
Go through the order question by question, in the same order, and answer each one with facts the attorney is prepared to swear to. A response that slides into a general apology leaves the real question unanswered.
The responses courts have praised and the ones they have criticized point to the same set of parts:
- A straight answer to each question. If the court asks how you verified the brief, describe the steps you really took, and the ones you skipped.
- A list of every defective citation. Name each fabricated case, invented quotation, wrong pinpoint and unsupported proposition by its page in the filed brief, grouped by type.
- A truthful account of what happened. Identify the tool or process that produced the error, the person who used it and the person who reviewed the output.
- A declaration from everyone with knowledge. The drafter, the signer and any supervising or local counsel each know different things. In Mata v. Avianca the court found that one attorney had not written an affidavit filed under his name and did not know if its statements were true.
- Evidence that the rest of the brief is sound. Say that every other authority was checked against its source, and by whom and when.
- Remedial steps you have already taken. That means withdrawing or correcting the filing, any payment offered to the other side, notice to the client, and changes to firm policy or training.
- An acceptance of responsibility that does not push the blame onto others.
CiteVerified verifies citations and does not give legal advice. Strategy for a show cause response, including whether to retain ethics or defense counsel, is a decision for the attorney of record.
How have courts treated responses to AI citation show cause orders?
In these rulings, candor and quick action lowered the consequences, and incomplete or changing explanations raised them. Every row below comes from the court’s own opinion or order.
| Matter | What the response did | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Mata v. Avianca, Inc., No. 22-cv-1461 (PKC) (S.D.N.Y. June 22, 2023) | Filed an affidavit that attached only excerpts of the “cases” and did not comply with the court’s April 11 and 12 orders; the court said counsel “doubled down” | $5,000 penalty jointly and severally, plus letters to the client and to each judge falsely named as an author |
| Park v. Kim, No. 22-2057 (2d Cir. Jan. 30, 2024) | Ordered to supply a copy of a cited decision, counsel said she was “unable to furnish a copy of the decision” and that ChatGPT suggested the case | Referral to the court’s Grievance Panel and an order to provide the ruling to her client |
| Wadsworth v. Walmart Inc. (D. Wyo. Feb. 24, 2025) | Withdrew the motions in limine the day after the order, admitted the cases came from an AI platform, paid opposing counsel’s fees, and adopted firm safeguards and training | Drafter: pro hac vice revoked and $3,000; supervising attorney and local counsel: $1,000 each; court declined to issue a show cause order against the firms, finding further sanctions unnecessary |
| Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P., No. B331918 (Cal. Ct. App. Sept. 12, 2025) | Counsel admitted AI use, accepted responsibility and expressed remorse, but argued the errors were limited | “a conservative sanction of $10,000” payable to the clerk, opinion forwarded to the State Bar, and a duty to serve the opinion on the client |
| Fletcher v. Experian (5th Cir. Feb. 18, 2026) | First response said counsel relied on publicly available versions of the cases and did not mention AI; later responses shifted | $2,500 sanction; the court said lesser sanctions were likely had counsel been forthcoming |
These matters, along with other entries and their public sources, also appear on the CiteVerified Sanctions Wall.
Should you disclose AI use in your order to show cause response?
Yes. If AI had any part in producing the bad citations, say so accurately in your first response. Courts have treated a partial account of AI use as a separate candor problem of its own.
In Fletcher, the show cause order told counsel to “explain whether and how she verified the accuracy of the propositions in her brief.” Her first response said nothing about AI. When she later blamed databases and “paraphrased summaries” for the errors, the court wrote: “The court does not find it credible that these sources produced the hallucinated quotations that appeared in Hersh’s brief.” It said that if she was calling AI-generated material paraphrased summaries, her response was “evasive, misleading, and sanctionable,” and it concluded: “Had Hersh accepted responsibility and been more forthcoming, it is likely that the court would have imposed lesser sanctions.”
Wadsworth went the other way. The court wrote, “The Court appreciates Respondents’ remedial steps, transparency, and apologetic sentiments,” and set the case apart from those where lawyers first misled the court, observing that “Respondents have been forthcoming, honest, and apologetic about their conduct.” It treated the drafting attorney’s honesty and candor as a mitigating factor.
Who has to respond: the drafter, the signer or the firm?
Each person named in the order has to respond, and the signing attorney cannot answer by pointing at the drafter. Wadsworth called the Rule 11 duty a “nondelegable responsibility” and warned that “blind reliance on another attorney can be an improper delegation of this duty and a violation of Rule 11.”
That explains why the Wyoming court sanctioned three lawyers who played different roles: the attorney who drafted the motions, a supervising attorney who signed them, and local counsel. The court said the supervising attorney “still has a nondelegable duty to ensure a motion is supported by existing law.” Firms face exposure as well. Rule 11(c)(1) states that “Absent exceptional circumstances, a law firm must be held jointly responsible for a violation committed by its partner, associate, or employee.”
To read more about what the signing duty demands before you file, see our article on the Rule 11 duty to verify citations.
What remedial steps do courts credit in a show cause response?
What courts have credited are steps already finished and documented, not promises about the future. The Wadsworth response listed the withdrawal of the motions, payment of the other side’s fees for responding to them, and “Implementing policies, safeguards, and training to prevent another occurrence in the future,” all with proof.
When you act matters as much as what you say. Even as it credited the response, the Wyoming court noted, “The Court notes that Plaintiffs could have acted more swiftly,” since the problem only came to light after the order issued. In Fletcher, the court said that if counsel had discovered the inaccuracies before its order, she “should have immediately alerted the court and sought leave to file a correct brief.” If no order has arrived yet but you know a filed brief has a problem, our guide on what to do if you filed a brief with a fake citation explains how to come forward first.
Remorse can soften a sanction but will not erase it. In Noland, counsel described his reliance on AI as “inexcusable,” and the court acknowledged that he “has expressed remorse for his actions,” yet it still imposed $10,000. Its rule was direct: no paper filed in any court “should contain any citations” that “the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified.”
How do you re-verify the brief before the response is filed?
Check every authority in the challenged filing against its source, not just the citations the court pointed out. If you fix only the listed items, you hand the court a fresh problem to discover.
The review should confirm that each case exists, that quotations match word for word, that pinpoints are right, that statutes and rules reflect current text, and that record and exhibit cites are accurate. Log every item with the date, the reviewer and the proof. Our pre-filing citation verification checklist walks through the complete method. Here is what one audit log row looks like; the data is made up and shown only to illustrate the format.
| Field | Example entry (fictional) |
|---|---|
| Location in filed brief | Motion, p. 7, line 4 |
| Citation as filed | Sample v. Example Holdings, 999 F. Supp. 3d 101, 105 (D. Nev. 2024) |
| Flagged in show cause order? | No |
| Finding | Case exists; quoted sentence does not appear at p. 105 or anywhere in the opinion |
| Category | Fabricated quotation attributed to a real case |
| Proof | Screenshots of pp. 104 to 106 and full-text search result, saved as AL-12 |
| Status | Red flag: disclose in response inventory; remove from corrected filing |
After that, check the response itself the same way so it does not repeat the mistake.
What mistakes make an order to show cause response worse?
The opinions keep returning to three problems: incomplete answers, shifting blame and late disclosure. Each one gives the court a reason to doubt everything else in the response.
- Giving a vague description of how the brief was drafted and then adding facts in a later filing, which is what happened in Fletcher.
- Attaching only partial material or leaving a question unanswered, which the Mata court found with the excerpts and a missing case that was never explained.
- Claiming the errors were isolated before anyone has checked the rest of the brief; the Noland court rejected that argument.
- Missing the deadline set in the order. In Park v. Kim, the Second Circuit ordered a copy of the cited decision by November 27, 2023, and the response did not arrive until November 29.
Where does a human citation audit fit in a show cause response?
It provides the verified inventory and the proof, checked by someone other than the person who drafted the brief. That is what CiteVerified does.
Our reviewers check each case, statute, rule, quotation, pinpoint, record cite and exhibit reference. You get back a manual audit log with screenshots, an annotated copy of the brief and a red-flag report. See what the audit covers, including the emergency correction memo for problems that come up late. Brief Verification is listed at $249 per brief, and a $75 rush add-on returns the audit within 5 business hours, depending on how complete the submission is and how long the brief runs. You can find the details on the pricing page.
CiteVerified is not a law firm. We verify citations and do not give legal advice; the attorney of record keeps responsibility for the filing and for everything said to the court. You can read more about the audit desk.
Frequently asked questions
How long do you have to respond to an order to show cause for AI citations?
The deadline comes from the order, and it can be tight. In Park v. Kim the Second Circuit ordered counsel on November 20, 2023 to produce a cited decision by November 27, 2023. If verifying the brief will take longer, ask for more time before the deadline passes, not after.
Does withdrawing the brief avoid sanctions after a show cause order?
Not always. In Wadsworth v. Walmart the motions were withdrawn the day after the order, and the court still sanctioned three attorneys, although it gave credit for the withdrawal. The 21-day safe harbor in Rule 11(c)(2) covers sanctions motions served by a party. It does not cover orders a court issues on its own under Rule 11(c)(3).
Is good faith a defense to AI citation sanctions?
Usually not a complete one. The Wadsworth court said sanctions do not require a finding of subjective bad faith. Good faith, candor and remorse can reduce the sanction, as in Noland v. Land of the Free, where the court described its $10,000 sanction as conservative.
Should the law firm file its own response?
If the order names the firm, the firm has to respond. Under Rule 11(c)(1), absent exceptional circumstances, a law firm must be held jointly responsible for a violation committed by its partner, associate or employee. In Wadsworth, the court chose not to issue a show cause order against the firms because it found further sanctions unnecessary.
Do you have to admit using ChatGPT or another AI tool?
If an AI tool produced the bad citations, courts expect you to say so accurately. In Fletcher v. Experian the Fifth Circuit criticized counsel for a first response that left out AI and said she likely would have received lesser sanctions had she been more forthcoming.
Get the brief verified before your response is due
If a court has issued an order to show cause, or you think one is coming, upload the brief for a human citation audit. You will receive an audit log, screenshot proof and a red-flag report to rely on when you tell the court what went wrong and what has been fixed.