U.S. courts imposed at least $145,000 in sanctions against attorneys for AI-fabricated citations in Q1 2026 alone — including a $109,700 record in Oregon and the first substantial federal appellate fi...
The Pentagon deployed its most powerful procurement weapon — a "supply chain risk" designation normally reserved for Huawei — against Anthropic after the AI company refused to remove safety guardrails...
Nebraska has recommended suspending an Omaha attorney's license after 57 of 63 citations in his Supreme Court brief were defective. Days later, a Georgia prosecutor admitted to submitting fake AI cita...
In Morgan v. V2X, Inc. (D. Colo., Mar. 30, 2026), a federal court issued a protective order requiring enterprise-grade AI contractual safeguards for any AI tool used with confidential discovery materi...
Nippon Life Insurance is suing OpenAI for "practicing law without a license" after ChatGPT helped a former employee generate frivolous pleadings. Simultaneously, a federal court ruled that AI chat log...
A federal court in Alabama has ordered attorney Joshua B. Watkins and his law firm to distribute a detailed public reprimand order to every client, opposing counsel, and judge in every pending case th...
On March 25, 2026, a Florida appellate court warned about AI use in legal filings, framing it as accuracy enforcement. But what the court is actually doing is institutional gatekeeping—using disclosur...
Marcus Allen Lipham, a Madison County, Tennessee attorney, was permanently disbarred by the Tennessee Supreme Court for violating fourteen separate rules of professional conduct. Seven former clients ...
On April 4, 2026, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke issued an opinion that would become the most expensive attorney misconduct verdict in American legal history. Stephen Brigandi, a San Diego attorney...
A former New Jersey assistant prosecutor, permanently disbarred in three states for stealing client funds, continued practicing law for nearly three years — collecting approximately $70,000 from six u...
A Rockingham County jury convicted former Portsmouth attorney Justin P. Nadeau on four felony counts after he extracted $275,000 from a client who had suffered a traumatic brain injury, then fabricate...
Over 1,200 documented cases of AI-generated fake citations in court filings worldwide. An Oregon attorney ordered to pay $109,700 in sanctions. Two New Orleans city attorneys forced to resign. Eightee...
Quick Facts Who: Spencer Michael Hecht, founding attorney at Hecht & Associates, Rockville, Maryland What: Disbarred by the Maryland Supreme Court for intentional dishonesty and a pattern of misconduc...
From the Thornburgh Memo to the Reno Rules to the McDade Amendment, the Department of Justice has spent four decades trying to exempt its lawyers from state bar discipline. A new proposed rule is the ...
From a Keys attorney who double-booked himself across courthouses to a Texas lawyer convicted of killing two pedestrians, the Florida Supreme Court’s latest disciplinary orders reveal the full spectru...
When 97 percent of a residency program’s physicians trained abroad, in a country where the majority of medical graduates are American-trained, the numbers begin to speak for themselves. A new civil ri...
Ronald Edward Durbin II: The YouTube “Auditor” Who Turned the Practice of Law Into a Weapon How a Tulsa attorney spent fifteen years as a licensed practitioner, reinvented himself as a First Amendment...
By The Ethics Reporter Editorial Board | March 29, 2026 Ariel Mitchell: Miami Attorney Suspended 75 Days for Lying to the Florida Bar, the Courts, and the Press — and the Number That Tells the Real St...
The rules governing attorney trust accounts exist for one reason: to protect clients from the moment their money enters an attorney’s possession until the moment it reaches its intended destination. T...
INTRODUCTION The legal profession has a word for what an attorney does when they cite a case to a court: representation. When a lawyer writes “see Smith v. Jones, 400 F.3d 112 (5th Cir. 2005)” in a br...
The Ethics Reporter Sends Open Letter to All 201 U.S. Law School Deans The Ethics Reporter has formally written to every dean of every ABA-accredited law school in the United States, demanding answers...
When Simone Melissa Gold entered the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021, she was a licensed physician and a licensed attorney two credentials that together represent years of education...
How a California Family Law Attorney Stole Nearly $5 Million from Clients, Fabricated Bank Records, and Ultimately Lost Her License in Two States INTRODUCTION In the world of legal ethics, few violati...
On Wednesday, February 4, 2026, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department disbarred attorney Jamie T. Ferrara. The disbarment was based on Ferrara’s failure to coopera...
On Wednesday, February 18, 2026, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department granted a motion to disbar attorney Terrance J. Dougherty. Martindale The disbarment was not...
On Thursday, March 5, 2026, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Judicial Department disbarred attorney Lamon Darrell Bland, effective immediately. Wikipedia The disbarment was not th...
Anthony Michael Pastel, a former assistant public defender in Columbia and Greene Counties in upstate New York, was automatically disbarred by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court in M...
Teresa Schiele Roper, an Apopka attorney with more than 35 years of practice in workers’ compensation, civil litigation, and local government law, was suspended from the Florida Bar following a felony...
The disciplinary case of Emelike Nwosuocha is unlike any other in the Florida Bar’s January 1, 2026 disciplinary cycle — and unlike almost any other in recent memory. On December 11, 2025, the Florida...
John Arthur Leklem, an Orlando litigation attorney who has been licensed to practice law in Florida since 1976, was suspended for 90 days by the Florida Supreme Court following a November 14, 2025 con...