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Perspective Shift

You read this story from where you sit.
Want to read it from somewhere else?

We'll re-present the same story as a thoughtful proponent of the professional accountability frame would. Not to convince you. To let you actually meet the argument.

Choose a vantage
Professional accountability frame
An attorney filed briefs riddled with fabricated citations, dodged the court's demand for a straight explanation, and kept doing it even after being warned — sanctions and disclosure to other courts are exactly how the bar polices this kind of misconduct.
AI hallucination cautionary tale
This is another entry in the growing docket of lawyers who quietly leaned on generative AI tools, never verified the output, and watched invented case law sail into federal filings — proof that the technology still demands human checking that practitioners aren't doing.
Retold from the other vantage
Steelman · slot A
The candor-and-craft case
A legal ethics professor would argue —
The rule here is older than ChatGPT: when you sign a brief, you vouch for every citation in it. Lindsay didn't just file fabricated cases once — she did it twice more after the court issued show-cause orders, including in the Second Circuit. Worse, when Magistrate Gorenstein gave her the chance every other lawyer in these AI cases has taken — explain what happened — she offered shifting non-answers, denied any computer assistance, then floated Lexis's AI features as a possible culprit. A $2,500 fine and an order requiring her to file this opinion in every case she's currently handling isn't harsh; it's the minimum needed to put other courts and her own clients on notice. That is exactly what professional discipline is for.

If this read like a fair rendering of the argument — even when you disagree — it's doing its job. Steelmen aren't aimed at persuading you; they're aimed at what the other side actually believes when they're thinking clearly.