By Kim Xi Harris Founder & Platform Architect, Lex Arca™ Legal Vault | Calculate your firm’s billing leakage | legalvault@lex-arca.com

According to Clio’s 2026 Legal Trends Report for Solo and Small Law Firms (May 2026, https://www.clio.com/about/press/2026-solo-small-firm-report/), 71% of solo practitioners and 75% of small firms are now using AI to complete legal work — yet fewer than 33% have seen any revenue increase from it, compared to nearly 60% of enterprise firms. The gap between AI adoption and AI compliance is not a policy problem. It is an architecture problem.

On June 8, 2026, a federal judge disqualified, fined, or barred all four attorneys of record in Withers v. City of Aberdeen — including two local counsel who never drafted the AI-fabricated briefs themselves. Signing a co-counsel’s filing is certification under Rule 11. In 2026, “I didn’t write it” is no longer a defense.

What Happened in Withers v. City of Aberdeen?

Two out-of-state attorneys admitted drafting motion papers with AI assistance and never verifying the citations; two Mississippi local counsel admitted they signed, or allowed their names to be signed to, those same filings without independently checking them. When the court could not locate several of the authorities cited in the parties’ summary judgment briefing, it ordered a show-cause hearing. All four attorneys accepted responsibility for the failure to cite-check before filing.

The underlying case was unremarkable: Tom Withers III sued the City of Aberdeen, Mississippi, over unpaid legal fees from earlier work. What made it remarkable is that the breakdown happened on both sides simultaneously. Withers’s filings, prepared by pro hac vice counsel admitted from out of state, contained hallucinated case citations. The City’s filings, prepared by a separate pro hac vice attorney, contained the same defect. Neither side’s Mississippi-admitted local counsel caught it before signing.

Senior U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock did not split the difference. Her June 8 order revoked both out-of-state attorneys’ pro hac vice admissions and barred them from appearing in the Northern District of Mississippi for two years. She disqualified the two local counsel from the case entirely, imposed fines on all four, and ordered the sanctions order forwarded to the relevant state bar authorities. The trial was cancelled. Every attorney of record was off the case.

Why Are Local Counsel Liable for a Co-Counsel’s AI Mistakes?

Local counsel’s signature on a filing is an independent certification under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — not a courtesy endorsement of someone else’s work. That duty exists specifically because the pro hac vice structure puts an out-of-state attorney’s filings in front of a court through a local lawyer’s name and bar number. The local attorney is the one the court can sanction directly, which is exactly what happened here.

In Withers, the local counsel’s stated defense was that they did not personally use AI and did not know their co-counsel had used it to draft the contested filings. The court found that explanation insufficient. Rule 11 does not ask whether an attorney personally generated the defective content — it asks whether the attorney made a reasonable inquiry before signing. “I trusted my co-counsel” carries the same weight under Rule 11 that “I trusted the AI” carries: none. Both describe the absence of verification, not the presence of a defense.

This matters disproportionately for solo and small-firm litigators, who serve as local counsel far more often than large firms do, and who frequently have less visibility into what an out-of-state co-counsel’s internal research process actually looks like. The exposure in Withers did not come from a firm that recklessly deployed AI across its practice. It came from two attorneys who simply signed a document prepared by someone else, the way local counsel routinely do.

Is This Part of a Broader National Pattern?

Yes — and the pattern is moving from individual judges’ standing orders toward statewide rules with teeth. As of 2026, courts have issued more than 300 standing orders specifically addressing AI use in filings, a figure that has grown sharply since the second half of 2025. Withers is not an outlier; it is a data point in a trend that is consolidating jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

New York moved first at the system-wide level. Part 161 of the Rules of the Chief Administrator of the Courts took effect statewide on June 1, 2026, requiring that any attorney who signs a paper “carefully review the paper and independently ensure” it contains no fabricated cases, statutes, or other AI-generated material — civil and criminal, every court in the Unified Court System. Florida followed two weeks later: the Florida Supreme Court adopted a statewide AI filing rule (Case No. SC2026-0673 / AOSC26-12), effective June 15, 2026, which superseded the prior circuit-level Florida Administrative Order 26-04 and extended the certification duty across the entire state rather than circuit by circuit. Texas has gone further still on the personal-certification front, requiring attorneys to certify they personally reviewed every AI-assisted statement before it reaches the court.

The throughline across all three is the same one Judge Aycock applied in Mississippi without the benefit of a named statewide rule: the duty to verify sits with the signing attorney, not the drafting tool, and not the co-counsel who used it.

The consequences attached to that duty are no longer theoretical or confined to small practices. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice terminated an attorney after fabricated citations surfaced in a federal brief — caught not by opposing counsel, but by a pro se plaintiff. A Florida attorney was separately sanctioned $86,000 for AI-fabricated filings. At a 350-person firm, three attorneys were disqualified and referred to their state bars over the same defect. The size of the firm and the sophistication of its client roster have not proven to be a protective factor; what has mattered, case after case, is whether anyone actually checked the work before it was signed.

What Should Local Counsel Do Before Signing a Co-Counsel’s Filing?

Independently verify every citation against an authoritative source before signing — regardless of who drafted the document, and regardless of whether you have worked with that co-counsel for twenty years. That verification needs to produce a record, not just a memory of having done it. Courts asking “did you check this” in 2026 are asking attorneys to produce something, not to recall something.

The structural reason this gap exists is not individual carelessness; it is an industry-wide governance vacuum. Roughly 75% of U.S. attorneys are now using AI in some part of their practice, but only about 25% have received any formal AI ethics training, and an estimated 44% of law firms have no formal AI governance policy at all. Local counsel signing a co-counsel’s AI-assisted brief are, in most firms, operating with no internal standard telling them what “sufficient review” even looks like — which is precisely the condition under which Withers happened.

In practice, that means treating a co-counsel’s draft the same way an attorney would treat their own AI-assisted research: pulling the actual case from a primary source, confirming the cited proposition is the one the case actually stands for, and confirming any quoted language appears verbatim in the opinion — not just that the case exists. None of that is new lawyering; it is the citation discipline attorneys were trained to apply long before generative AI existed. What has changed is the volume of material moving through that check and the speed at which it needs to happen, which is exactly why an undocumented, ad hoc version of that review keeps failing under deadline pressure.

How Does Documentation Change the Outcome in a Case Like This?

It gives local counsel something concrete to produce the moment a court asks the question Judge Aycock asked in Mississippi. Lex Arca Legal Vault provides a Sentinel jurisdictional gate, a Verification Attestation, and an append-only, tamper-evident activity trail — generating the documented compliance record ABA Formal Opinion 512 contemplates, before a co-counsel’s filing reaches a local attorney’s signature line. The record exists whether or not the local attorney personally drafted a word of the brief.

That is the gap Withers exposed. Two attorneys had no way to show the court they had done anything beyond signing. A documented, verifiable activity trail is the difference between an attorney who can answer that question and one who cannot.

From Kim’s Chair: The Questions I Would Have Asked

I did not build Lex Arca from studying reports on the market. I built it from a chair — the client’s chair — where I watched situations like the one in Withers unfold from the other side of the table. When I read about four attorneys losing a case over filings none of the clients ever saw before they were submitted, I do not see a cautionary tale about lawyers. I see two clients who hired local counsel specifically because they trusted someone with standing in that courtroom — and who had no way to know that trust was never actually verified.

If I were in that courtroom as the client, here is what I would ask the room:

  1. How many attorneys serving as local counsel right now have ever asked their out-of-state co-counsel what tool produced the draft they’re about to sign?
  2. If a client asked any attorney in this room to produce proof they personally verified a co-counsel’s citations, how many could actually produce it?
  3. At what point does a pro hac vice sponsorship stop being a formality and start being a liability nobody priced in?
  4. Why does the legal industry treat “I signed something I didn’t write” as routine, when no other licensed profession would accept that as a defense?

And if I were your client — sitting across from you before you walked into that courtroom — here is what I would have asked you:

  1. Did you personally check every citation in this filing, or are you trusting that whoever drafted it did?
  2. If the other side challenges something in this brief, is there a record showing what you reviewed and when?
  3. Do you know whether your co-counsel used AI to prepare any part of what you’re about to sign?
  4. If this filing turns out to contain an error you didn’t catch, what happens to my case — and to you?

These are not hostile questions. They are the questions that documentation answers — and the silence where documentation does not exist.

Key Takeaways

  1. In Withers v. City of Aberdeen (N.D. Miss., June 8, 2026), all four attorneys of record were sanctioned after AI-fabricated citations appeared in filings from both sides — including two local counsel who never drafted the defective briefs themselves.
  2. Signing or permitting a co-counsel’s filing is independent certification under Rule 11; “I didn’t know my co-counsel used AI” is not a recognized defense.
  3. Local counsel should independently verify every citation in a co-counsel’s filing before signing, and that verification should produce a documented record, not just a memory.
  4. Lex Arca Legal Vault provides a documented, verifiable AI activity trail designed to support attorney compliance workflows, including the record local counsel need before signing a co-counsel’s work.
  5. Calculate your firm’s billing leakage and get early access at https://calculator.lex-arca.com.

About the Author: Kim Xi Harris is the Founder and Platform Architect of Lex Arca™, an AI-native litigation intelligence and compliance platform for solo and small-firm attorneys. She is a Cornell Women’s Entrepreneur Program graduate, SBA Women in Business Champion Award recipient, WOSB certified, and holds five Google AI certifications. Calculate your firm’s billing leakage at https://calculator.lex-arca.com — or reach us at legalvault@lex-arca.com.