Law firm could face sanctions over fake case citations generated by AI

Hopefully heavy sanctions. The case backlog in many courts is already bad enough, without the judges having to double-check that every case cited to them wasn't hallucinated (or grossly misrepresented) by some lazy lawyer's pet AI.

Plus - how many hour did Morgan & Morgan bill to their client, for the "work" of preparing the bogus brief?

Disbar everyone involved. How could you justify any other outcome?

There is simply no excuse for this. When an attorney submits a brief to a judge asserting a legal principle is xyz as set forth in a specific case, they are ethically obliged to have actually read the case when making such a representation.

And in today's world that includes being sure the copy of the case being read is obtained from a reliable source such as Lexis Nexis.

Beyond the questionable ethics, such conduct adversely impacts the effectiveness of a trial attorney's ability to practice. When an attorney objects to something in the middle of trial, the judge will often not want to excuse the jury and go to chambers to do legal research over every objection during trial. There simply isn't time to do that. Most times objections are routine and the trial judge already knows how to rule.

But, in most trials there will times the judge isn't sure and is looking for guidance from the (usually very brief) arguments of counsel regarding the objection. Trial attorneys often appear before the same judges over and over. And skilled trial attorneys take great care to build a solid reputation for credibility so trial judges know they can trust the attorney will always be reliable that when arguing what the law is on a subject (or to indicate uncertainty so the judge knows they are not certain).

Building credibility starts with legal briefs. Being sloppy regarding the legal principles a cited case stands for sends a signal to the judge that the attorney is not a source that can be relied upon as trustworthy on those occasions when the judge is inclined to rule from the bench.