The Florida Supreme Court’s new AI-related filing rule takes effect June 15, and if you read some of the coverage, you might think Florida courts are entering some kind of futuristic legal era.

They are not.

What the court actually did was remind lawyers of something that predates computers, the internet, and probably most of the courthouses we practice in today: if you put your name on a filing, you are responsible for what is in it.

That is the story here.

The rule change comes after courts around the country have been dealing with a growing number of filings containing fake cases, fake quotations, and citations that look perfectly legitimate until someone tries to find them. Many of those problems trace back to lawyers relying too heavily on generative AI tools without checking the output carefully enough before filing papers.

And to be honest, some of the examples have been astonishing.

Not because the technology made mistakes. Anybody who has spent time around these systems understands they can produce errors. The surprising part is how many lawyers apparently trusted the output enough to file it in court without independently verifying it.

That is the part judges are reacting to.

The new Florida rule amends Rule 2.515 to require attorneys signing court filings to certify that cited legal authorities actually exist and are accurately represented. Courts are also expressly authorized to impose sanctions for violations.

In practical terms, that means lawyers now have even less room to argue, “the software gave me the wrong information.”

But I suspect most judges already felt that way.

What the Florida Supreme Court really seems to be doing here is standardizing expectations across the state. Different circuits had started issuing their own administrative orders about AI use, disclosures, certifications, and verification requirements. If you practiced in multiple jurisdictions, the rules could feel inconsistent depending on where your case was pending.

Now there is at least one statewide standard.

Frankly, that probably helps everybody.

The larger issue, though, is not really about whether lawyers use AI. Most lawyers already use technology constantly. Legal research platforms themselves have incorporated AI-driven tools for years. Younger attorneys, especially, are naturally experimenting with newer systems because they are fast, efficient, and often genuinely helpful.

The problem starts when efficiency quietly replaces judgment.

That is where things can go sideways.

One thing nonlawyers may not fully appreciate is how believable AI hallucinations can look inside legal writing. These systems do not usually spit out nonsense that immediately sounds ridiculous. They generate citations that resemble real cases. They produce quotations written in convincing judicial language. Sometimes the formatting is flawless.

Until somebody checks the source.

That “until somebody checks” part matters more than ever now.

Judges should not have to spend time figuring out whether cited authority exists. Opposing counsel should not have to waste billable hours tracking down phantom cases. Courts already move slowly enough without adding forensic citation review to motion practice.

And credibility, once damaged in front of a judge, is difficult to repair.

Every experienced litigator knows that.

You can lose an argument and recover. You can lose a motion and recover. But once a court starts questioning whether your filings can be trusted, the problem becomes much bigger than one bad brief.

That is why I do not see this rule as anti-technology. I also do not think it means courts are trying to ban AI from legal practice. That ship sailed a long time ago.

The better comparison is probably GPS.

GPS is extremely useful. Almost everybody relies on it. But if your GPS tells you to drive into a lake, at some point you are still responsible for looking through the windshield.

AI works the same way.

Used carefully, it can save time and help lawyers organize information faster. Used carelessly, it can create a mess in a hurry.

And the legal profession is probably still early in figuring out where those boundaries are.

A couple years ago, a lot of lawyers dismissed concerns about hallucinated citations as overblown. At the time, some of this felt more theoretical than real. That has changed. Courts around the country are now dealing with these issues regularly enough that judges clearly feel the need to send a stronger message.

Florida is hardly alone there.

What may ultimately matter most about this rule is not the language itself, but what it signals about the direction courts are moving. Judges are becoming less patient with the idea that AI mistakes are somehow different from other professional failures.

From the court’s perspective, a nonexistent case citation is still a nonexistent case citation regardless of whether a lawyer invented it personally or copied it from a chatbot.

And honestly, that is probably the correct approach.

Technology changes. Professional responsibility does not.

At the end of the day, no software program signs the filing. No algorithm stands before the judge at a hearing. No chatbot gets sanctioned by the court.

The lawyer does.

That part has not changed at all.

Matthew T. Christ is a partner at Rafferty Domnick Cunningham & Yaffa, a preeminent Florida law firm based in Palm Beach Gardena, West Palm Beach, Pensacola, and Jacksonville.

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