The filename gave it away

Most AI citation cases begin the same way: opposing counsel or the court notices that a cited case does not say what the brief claims, or does not exist at all, and starts pulling the thread. United States v. Farris, decided by the Sixth Circuit on April 3, 2026, began a little more embarrassingly. The court's attention was drawn by the name of the file the attorney had submitted. One of the briefs arrived carrying the filename "CoCounsel Skill Results."

CoCounsel is the generative AI legal assistant built into Westlaw. Leaving its default output label attached to a filed appellate brief is roughly the equivalent of turning in a term paper still titled "ChatGPT response." It told the court, before anyone read a word of the argument, exactly how the document had been produced. And once a court knows a brief came straight out of an AI tool, the next thing it does is check the citations.

What the checking found

Steven N. Howe, appointed to represent the defendant on appeal, had filed two briefs prepared with CoCounsel. When the Sixth Circuit examined them, it found the familiar fingerprints of unverified AI output. Three of the citations included quotations that simply were not in the sources they were attributed to - language the AI had generated and hung on a real case name. Two other citations misdescribed what the cases actually held. In one, the brief claimed a decision had been reversed when the court had in fact upheld it, which is the sort of error that can flip the entire meaning of an argument. Another misrepresented a defendant's role in the cited matter.

These are not stylistic quibbles. In a criminal appeal, the authorities a lawyer cites are the scaffolding of the client's case. Quotations that do not exist and holdings described backwards do not just weaken a brief; they mislead the court about the state of the law at the exact moment a defendant's liberty is on the line.

The sanctions, stacked

The Sixth Circuit did not reach for a fine. It imposed four consequences that, taken together, hit an appointed lawyer where it counts.

First, it denied Howe his compensation for the appellate work. Howe was appointed under the Criminal Justice Act, which pays lawyers from public funds to represent defendants who cannot afford counsel. The court refused to pay him for the briefs he had filed. If you produce work product this defective, the court's reasoning ran, you do not get paid for producing it.

Second, it removed him from the representation entirely and ordered that new counsel be appointed. The defendant was effectively handed a fresh lawyer because his current one could not be trusted to submit a reliable brief.

Third, it reset the briefing schedule, which means the whole appeal had to start its briefing over, delaying resolution for a defendant who had done nothing wrong.

Fourth, it referred the matter for disciplinary proceedings, opening a separate track that can carry its own professional penalties.

The line the court drew

The Sixth Circuit's holding is quotable precisely because it is so plain: "An attorney's ethical obligations of competence and candor apply regardless of what tools are used to prepare work product." That sentence is aimed squarely at the defense that keeps surfacing in these cases, the idea that the AI made the mistake and the lawyer is somehow a bystander to his own filing.

The court's position is that the tool is irrelevant to the duty. A lawyer can draft with a typewriter, a junior associate, a form book, or a language model; whatever produces the words, the lawyer who signs and files the brief is certifying that the citations are real and the law is stated accurately. CoCounsel did not owe the court a duty of candor. Howe did. Delegating the drafting to an AI did not delegate away the obligation to read what it wrote and confirm the cases exist.

The tool with the reassuring name

There is a small irony in the branding. "CoCounsel" is marketed as a partner in the practice of law, a capable second chair that handles the grunt work of research. The name implies a colleague you can rely on. But a co-counsel who fabricated quotations and misdescribed holdings would get a human lawyer in serious trouble, and the AI version is no different, except that the human whose bar card is on the line is the one who trusted it without checking.

The productivity pitch for these tools is real: they can draft fast, and for a solo or appointed lawyer buried in cases, fast is tempting. But speed that skips verification is not a shortcut; it is a liability transfer that never actually transfers. The lawyer still owns every citation. Howe learned that the expensive way, and the record of it - unpaid work, a lost appointment, a delayed appeal, and a disciplinary referral - now sits in a published federal appellate opinion with his name on it.

Where this fits

Farris joins a growing shelf of appellate decisions - across the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and other circuits - sanctioning lawyers for filing AI-generated briefs they never verified. Each one restates the same non-delegable duty in slightly sharper language, and each one adds a new detail to the cautionary record. Here the detail is the filename. Howe did not even strip the AI tool's label off his own brief before filing it, which is a fitting emblem for the whole problem: the work was never really read closely enough to catch what was wrong with it, up to and including the name on the front.