The Sixth Circuit's decision in United States v. Farris is a narrow appellate sanctions opinion with a broad lesson: a trusted legal AI product is not a substitute for lawyer verification.
The court did not decide the merits of the defendant's criminal appeal. Instead, it addressed appointed counsel's briefs. Counsel admitted using Westlaw CoCounsel to prepare the briefs and failing to adequately review and verify the AI-generated content before filing.
The resulting errors were not limited to imaginary cases. The briefs cited real authorities but attributed quotations and legal propositions to them that the authorities did not contain.
That is the part to underline. A real citation can still be a false authority.
How The Court Spotted The Problem
The Sixth Circuit said its initial concern began with the file name of the principal brief: "CoCounsel Skill Results." CoCounsel is Westlaw's AI platform.
The court then found three problematic citations. The cited authorities existed, but the quoted language did not appear in them. The briefs also misrepresented the holdings of United States v. Washington and United States v. Anthony.
After issuing a show-cause order, the court required counsel to provide copies of cited authorities and explain who wrote the briefs, whether generative AI was used, how the briefs were cite-checked, and whether AI was used in district court filings.
Counsel responded that staff uploaded district court documents to Westlaw CoCounsel to create a first draft, that counsel supplemented the draft, and that the same process was used for the reply. Counsel admitted the false quotations were AI-generated, accepted responsibility, and said he had not previously been disciplined.
What The Court Did
The Sixth Circuit imposed several consequences.
It ordered that counsel not be compensated under the Criminal Justice Act for time spent on the appeal. It directed the clerk to forward the opinion to the Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit for possible disciplinary proceedings. It also directed service on district court and Kentucky Bar authorities.
By separate order, the court removed counsel from further representation, ordered appointment of replacement counsel, locked the filed briefs, and reset the briefing schedule.
The delay to the defendant's criminal appeal mattered to the court. So did the fact that the lawyer was serving through a publicly funded appointment.
The Legal AI Product Point
The court's opinion is careful not to treat AI as categorically forbidden. It recognizes that new technologies can bring significant promise to legal work.
But the court also says lawyers must understand how technology can be misused or contribute to inaccuracies. That remains true even when the tool is sponsored by a trusted legal technology provider.
For law firms and legal departments, that is the operational takeaway: vendor reputation is not a verification protocol.
What Appellate Teams Should Change
Appellate teams using AI should build a source-checking process that covers more than whether the case exists.
At minimum, the process should verify:
- every cited authority exists;
- every direct quotation appears in the cited source;
- every parenthetical and proposition accurately reflects the source;
- the cited case's outcome is correctly described;
- the procedural posture is relevant to the argument;
- the record citations are checked against the record; and
- the signing lawyer understands how the AI-assisted draft was created.
The last point matters because counsel in Farris relied on staff to upload materials and generate the first draft. The court treated verification as the attorney's responsibility, not a staff function.
Bottom Line
Farris is not just another hallucinated-citation case. It is a false-quotation and mischaracterized-authority case involving a mainstream legal AI product.
That makes it more useful as a warning. The question before filing is not "did the AI invent a case?" The better question is: "did a lawyer read the source and confirm that it says what the brief says it says?"