A prominent American law firm has issued a sweeping apology after artificial intelligence tripped it into a courtroom fiasco. Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani — a national firm boasting 1,800 lawyers — confessed it was “profoundly embarrassed” when one of its attorneys submitted a bankruptcy filing riddled with fake citations and legal fabrications conjured by AI.
The episode unfolded in an Alabama bankruptcy case involving Jackson Hospital, where the firm represented a creditor. In a written mea culpa, Gordon Rees told the judge it would accept any penalty deemed appropriate and confirmed it has tightened its internal policies on AI use to prevent another such debacle.
The court’s scrutiny began months earlier when U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Hawkins flagged what he described as “pervasive inaccurate, misleading, and fabricated” references in a filing prepared by attorney Cassie Preston. Initially, Preston denied using AI but later withdrew the document as suspicions mounted. The hospital and its lender, Jackson Investment Group, later pushed for sanctions, citing reputational damage and wasted legal resources.
In a later filing, Preston admitted she was aware AI had been used in preparing the document, though she maintained she hadn’t personally deployed the tool. She expressed remorse to the court, attributing her oversight to being overworked and struggling with personal difficulties.
The fallout was costly. Gordon Rees agreed to pay more than $55,000 in combined legal fees to opposing counsel as restitution for the confusion caused by the fabricated citations. The firm has since rolled out new training programs and a “cite-checking policy” designed to keep machine-generated errors from creeping into future filings.
The incident places Gordon Rees among a growing list of firms caught off guard by the unfiltered creativity of generative AI — a technology now forcing even the most established institutions to rethink how they balance innovation with professional responsibility.
