Posted to Linked In by
Mary Matuszak
Director of Library Services at New York County District Attorney’s Office 27 July 2026
ATTORNEY USED LEXIS+ PROTEGE BUT FAILED TO VERIFY CITES
The circumstances are set forth in the accompanying declaration of counsel. In summary, and not as an excuse, counsel revised the opening brief using a new LexisNexis AI system called Lexis+ with Protégé. Counsel asked the system legal-research questions relating to issues in the appeal and incorporated revised material into the brief. Counsel then continued editing the document but failed to independently verify each revised quotation against a legal research database before filing.
On January 29, 2026, the County’s Respondent’s Brief stated that a quotation counsel had attributed to Hager did not appear in the opinion. Counsel revised that passage in the reply brief but did not treat the County’s observation as the warning it was. The Court of Appeal has recently admonished, “no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations—whether provided by generative Al or any other source—that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified.” (Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. (2025) 114 Cal.App.5th 426, 431.)
Counsel did not meet that standard here. Counsel accepts the Court’s admonition without reservation.
Keira Thompson, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Cnty. of San Diego, Defendant and Respondent., 2026 WL 2109211, at *3
