Responding to AI Fake-Citation Sanctions: The Rule 11 Safe Harbor, the Sanctions Hearing, and the Aftermath

Ronald C. Minkoff, Partner | Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz

Ronald C. Minkoff is a partner in the Litigation Group at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz and chair of the firm’s Professional Responsibility Group. He served as defense counsel to attorney Steven Schwartz and the firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman in the sanctions proceedings over a court filing built on fake case citations generated by ChatGPT. One of New York State’s leading practitioners in attorney ethics and professional responsibility, he represents lawyers in attorney discipline cases, legal malpractice and professional liability litigation, and legal fee disputes, provides ethics opinions to law firm clients, and often serves as an expert witness in malpractice and fee matters.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Minkoff earned his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1980. He is admitted to practice in New York and in local federal courts, and he has taught Professional Responsibility at Columbia University School of Law, New York University School of Law, Fordham Law School, Brooklyn Law School, and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

• Recognition & Leadership

The Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers presented Mr. Minkoff with its Charles W. Kettlewell Award in 2024, a lifetime-achievement recognition of his four decades of work in legal ethics and professional responsibility. Best Lawyers in America named him “Lawyer of the Year” in New York Ethics and Professional Responsibility for 2011 and 2024, and in Legal Malpractice Law – Defendants for 2019 and 2021. Super Lawyers magazine has listed him as a New York-area “Super Lawyer” for Professional Liability: Defense Work and Business Litigation for nineteen consecutive years, and he is recognized in Who’s Who Legal: Professional Negligence 2024.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Minkoff is President of the New York County Lawyers Association and co-chair of NYCLA’s Task Force on Professionalism. He is a past president of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct (COSAC) and Committee on Attorney Professionalism, a member of the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services, and a member of the NYSBA Executive Committee. His recent panels include “Turning the Tables: Defending Against an Adversaries’ Use of AI” for NYCLA and a lawyer discipline workshop for the National Conference of Bar Presidents, and he has written extensively for the New York Professional Responsibility Report, The Professional Lawyer, and The New York Law Journal.

• Experience

Mr. Minkoff represents lawyers in attorney discipline cases, legal malpractice and professional liability cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants, and legal fee disputes. He also brings more than 30 years of experience representing law firms and law firm partners in partnership formations, disputes, lateral transitions, and dissolutions, and he represents businesses, executives, and professionals in commercial litigation, including business break-ups and securities lawsuits. Representative matters include Fragin v. First Funds Holdings LLC, Grynberg v. BP Exploration Operating Co. Ltd., Lakah v. UBS AG, and In re Lerner.

Amy Richardson, Partner | Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis

Amy Richardson is a partner with Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, where she co-chairs the firm’s Legal Ethics and Malpractice group, practicing in Washington, D.C. and Raleigh. She counsels and represents lawyers and law firms in disciplinary investigations, prosecutions, and malpractice matters, with disciplinary experience before state bars, the USPTO’s Office of Enrollment and Discipline, and the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility. Her practice also covers complex civil litigation and government enforcement actions.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Richardson received her J.D., cum laude, from Duke Law School and her B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of North Carolina. After law school, she clerked for Judge Carlton Tilley of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.

• Recognition & Leadership

Chambers USA has recognized Ms. Richardson as a notable practitioner, Super Lawyers has named her a “Rising Star,” and Business North Carolina magazine has ranked her among its “Legal Elite.”

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Richardson teaches Ethics and the Law of Lawyering at Duke Law, where she is a Senior Lecturing Fellow, and teaches ethics and professional responsibility at the Georgetown University Law Center. She serves as an advisory member of the North Carolina Bar Ethics Committee, as Secretary of the North Carolina Bar Association’s Litigation Council, and as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims Committee on Admission and Practice.

• Experience

Alongside her discipline-defense practice, Ms. Richardson counsels lawyers and law firms on partner admissions and departures and on law firm dissolutions, and she handles complex civil cases in federal court, state court, and arbitration proceedings throughout the United States. She successfully represented one of the defendants in U.S. v. Price, Zaborsky & Ward, a high-profile obstruction of justice case in the District of Columbia Superior Court in which the defendant was found not guilty after a two-month trial, and she served as counsel in Hatfill v. Ashcroft, the Federal Privacy Act suit in which the government ultimately paid Dr. Steven Hatfill $5.8 million — one of the largest Privacy Act settlements in history.

Jeremy Bates, Counsel | Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz

Jeremy Bates is Counsel to the Legal Ethics & Professional Responsibility and Litigation Groups at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, with a practice focused on lawyers and law firms. He defends professional clients against claims of litigation misconduct, legal malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, defamation, and fraud, represents attorneys in grievance matters, and handles fee disputes. In a case arising out of a cross-border acquisition, he wrote a motion for sanctions that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Bates earned his J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School and his A.B. cum laude from Harvard College. He is admitted to practice in New York. He clerked for The Honorable Jacques L. Wiener, Jr., U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit, and served in government as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan.

• Recognition & Leadership

Law360 hailed Mr. Bates as a “Legal Lion” for helping convince the Commercial Division, New York County, to dismiss business-tort claims.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Bates served as a member of the New York City Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics. He has written on legal-ethics topics and teaches continuing legal education courses, including the Practicing Law Institute programs “Ethics in Discovery” and “The Law of Litigation Misconduct – Attorney ‘Deceit or Collusion.’”

• Experience

Mr. Bates has 20 years of experience in state and federal courts and other dispute-resolution forums, and his professional-responsibility work extends to acting for clients damaged by deposition misconduct or by conflicted lawyering. He has represented plaintiffs and defendants across a broad range of litigations, securing the dismissal of RICO, trademark, and computer-access claims, and has resolved disputes through alternative resolutions and pre-litigation dispositions. Before joining Frankfurt Kurnit, he was associated with the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, representing major financial institutions in litigations and in investigations by the SEC, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the New York Attorney General’s Office, and was counsel at Elman Freiberg PLLC, a litigation boutique specializing in representing lawyers, law firms, trustees, and beneficiaries. His pro bono work includes post-conviction representation before the New York Court of Appeals, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chessie da Parma, Associate | Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz

Chessie da Parma is an associate in the Litigation and Legal Ethics & Professional Responsibility Groups at Frankfurt Kurnit and a dual-qualified attorney and solicitor. She writes on AI-hallucination sanctions for the firm’s technology law blog, and she advises companies and individuals across a wide range of disputes, including professional responsibility issues, commercial litigation, and intellectual property matters.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. da Parma holds an LL.M. from New York University School of Law (2022), an LLM LPC (2014) and GDL (2013) from the University of Law, UK, and an M.A. Hons. in International Relations from the University of St Andrews, UK (2010). She is admitted to practice in New York and the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, as well as England and Wales.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. da Parma serves on the Board of UK Lawyers in New York, a member-driven network of lawyers in New York who have qualified, trained, or practiced in the UK, and she has hosted the network’s receptions at Frankfurt Kurnit’s offices in downtown Manhattan.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. da Parma is an active member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL). She co-presented the myLawCLE webinar “Social Media’s Impact on Ethics in the Practice of Law” with Frankfurt Kurnit colleague Kristen G. Niven, and her writing for the firm’s technology law blog includes “Another Week, Another AI Hallucination Sanction – With a Twist,” an analysis of the Arizona federal court’s order in Mavy v. Commissioner of Social Security Administration sanctioning an attorney for the misuse of AI in a brief.

• Experience

Before joining Frankfurt Kurnit, Ms. da Parma was a litigation associate at TLT LLP, based in Bristol, UK, and worked at a litigation boutique in New York. Her UK practice included acting for major lenders and UK clearing banks in both consumer and commercial litigation matters.

SESSION 1 – Caught: The Fire Drill | Ronald C. Minkoff & Jeremy Bates & Chessie da Parma | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

This session begins with the discovery, by opposing counsel, the court, or self-reporting and the immediate response and preservation steps. The panel then walks through the sanctions framework: Rule 11, the safe harbor, court-initiated sanctions, inherent authority, and other sanctions mechanisms available to the court or the sanction-seeking party, before turning to the strategic considerations once a fabricated citation is identified in a filed submission, correct, withdraw, or defend.

Attendees learn how to investigate the failure, including how the citation entered the brief, what courts want to know, and the role of prompts, drafts, supervision, and verification procedures, along with the ethical duties implicated by AI-generated citation errors: candor, competence, and supervision.

The session closes with the sanctions response, themes that have resonated with courts, effective remediation efforts, and common mistakes that worsen the situation and the sanctions hearing itself: preparing witnesses, presenting mitigation evidence, and addressing questions concerning AI use and attorney oversight, with lessons from the leading decisions on how courts have assessed AI citation failures and the factors that appear to drive outcomes.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – The Fallout: The License, the Carrier, and the Client | Amy Richardson | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

The second hour follows what comes after the sanction and what recovery actually looks like. It begins with the bar or grievance referral: what it triggers, how the AI-citation discipline matters have unfolded, and what disciplinary authorities weigh, pattern versus one-off, candor in the proceeding, remediation already done. The session then turns to whose sanction it is when the draft wasn’t yours, how courts have split consequences among signing partner, drafting associate, local counsel, and co-counsel, and how each seat is defended and to appealing the sanctions order: abuse-of-discretion review and the arguments with traction.

On the institutional side, the carrier: notice obligations, the AI-specific exclusions appearing in policies, the documentation that supports coverage, and the discoverability of AI drafting materials and the client: Rule 1.4 disclosure, when the error forces withdrawal, fee consequences, and the successor-counsel handoff.

The hour ends with the comeback, reinstatement, court-ordered compliance, the firm AI policies that read as mitigation when adopted after an incident and a closing from the defense bar on the five decisions that most reliably separate a survivable mistake from a career event.