Another day, another sanctions opinion involving a lawyer who filed AI-generated legal work product riddled with hallucinated cases.

This time, it's the 11th Circuit.

The court's opinion reads like something that should be satire but unfortunately isn't. Counsel submitted an opening brief citing at least eight nonexistent cases. After opposing counsel pointed out the problem, he tried to fix it by withdrawing the bad citations. Except the eight cases he "withdrew" weren't the same eight fake cases from his opening brief.

Worse still?

The replacement list consisted of eight more hallucinated cases.

You almost couldn't script it better.

The 11th Circuit responded exactly as it should have. It reminded lawyers that competence requires "legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation." It emphasized that AI is no substitute for actual intelligence. And it referred the attorney for disciplinary proceedings.

Good.

But here's what bothers me about the inevitable reaction to opinions like this.

People will say, "See? AI is dangerous."

No. That's the wrong lesson.

AI didn't file the brief.

The lawyer did.

AI is an extraordinary tool. But it never replaces my judgment. Nor should it.

I would never file a brief without manually checking every citation and every quotation. I don't care whether those citations came from ChatGPT, Lexis, Westlaw, a first-year associate, or my own memory.

Verification is the job.

In fact, this isn't really an AI problem at all. It's the same professional obligation lawyers have always had.

When Lexis or Westlaw gives me a case, I Shepardize it before relying on it. I confirm that the quotation actually says what I claim it says. I make sure the proposition I'm citing is still good law.

That's not because I distrust Lexis or Westlaw. It's because I'm the one signing the brief. AI deserves exactly the same treatment.

The lawyers getting sanctioned aren't victims of unreliable technology. They're victims of their own willingness to skip the last—and most important—step in the process. They accepted the first answer a machine gave them without exercising independent professional judgment.

That's not innovation. That's laziness.

Every time another sanctions opinion like this gets published, it reinforces the false narrative that AI is incompatible with competent lawyering.

The opposite is true.

Lawyers who learn how to use AI responsibly will have a significant advantage over those who don't. They'll work more efficiently, spot more issues, and deliver better value to clients.

But only if they remember one simple rule: AI can draft your brief. It cannot sign your name.

And that's why the responsibility—for every citation, every quotation, every argument, and every word filed with a court—will always belong to the lawyer, not the software.

Apple's newly filed trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI contains an allegation that should make every employer's ears perk up.

According to the complaint, multiple departing Apple employees allegedly emailed Apple's confidential information to their personal email accounts on their way out the door. Apple also claims that some former employees later used Apple's confidential and trade secret information to help OpenAI develop competing hardware.

Whether Apple ultimately proves those allegations is for the courts to decide.

But the behavior it describes is one of the oldest—and most obvious—red flags in the employee-theft playbook.

When someone suddenly starts forwarding company files to Gmail the week before resigning, odds are they're not creating a personal scrapbook.

The good news is that employees who steal information often leave breadcrumbs. The key is knowing what to look for.

I love to travel. It's not just about the places you see or the things you do. It's also about the people you meet.
Workplace Investigations: Five Key Takeaways, Part One, Part Two, and Part Three — via Employment Law Worldview

Time to Talk about "The Rizz" — via Robin Schooling

The End of Independent Federal Agencies Will Change Your Business — via Harvard Business Review

Last week, The New York Times published a deeply reported investigation alleging that Donald Trump personally intervened with FIFA President Gianni Infantino to have U.S. striker Folarin "Flo" Balogon’s red card suspended so he could play in the United States' World Cup Round of 16 match against Belgium.

Whether you're a soccer fan or not almost doesn’t matter.

The allegation is what matters.

The President of the United States allegedly used the weight of his office to influence what should have been an independent disciplinary decision. And according to the report, it worked.

That's not just a sports story. It's also a workplace investigation story.

One of the quickest ways to undermine an internal investigation is for someone with power to signal what outcome they want before the facts have been gathered.

It doesn't have to be as dramatic as a president calling the head of FIFA.

It can be the CEO who tells HR, "I know she's lying."

Or the founder who says, "He's too valuable to lose."

Or the executive who reminds everyone that the accused employee "has always been loyal to this company."

Once that happens, the investigation isn't really about finding the truth anymore. It’s about justifying a preferred outcome.

Employees notice.
Witnesses notice.
And if the matter ends up in litigation, juries notice too.

I've defended countless employment cases over the years. One theme appears over and over again: plaintiffs don't just attack the employer's decision. They also attack the integrity of the process that produced it.

They ask who made the decision.
Who influenced the decision.
Whether HR was actually independent.
Whether investigators interviewed the right witnesses.
Whether evidence that favored the employee was ignored.
Whether similarly situated employees were treated differently because someone important wanted a particular result.

Those questions matter because courts and juries understand something every workplace leader should understand: A fair process is often just as important as the ultimate decision.

When investigations appear predetermined, employers create problems that extend far beyond the individual case.

They lose credibility with employees.

They discourage people from reporting misconduct because they believe the outcome is already decided.

Managers stop trusting HR.

And in litigation, what might have been a defensible termination suddenly looks like retaliation, discrimination, favoritism, or pretext.

The legal issue often isn't that someone with authority participated in the decision. Senior leaders are supposed to make important decisions.

The problem is when that authority becomes improper influence.

HR and investigators need enough independence to follow the evidence wherever it leads—even if the facts point in an uncomfortable direction or involve a high-performing executive, a rainmaker, or someone the CEO likes.

Good investigations don't ask, "What outcome does leadership want?" They ask, "What actually happened?"

That’s the only question that protects the integrity of the process.

Not every wage-and-hour lawsuit belongs as a class action.

That's the lesson from the 4th Circuit's recent decision in Overby v. Anheuser-Busch, where the court vacated certification of a Virginia wage-and-hour class alleging employees weren't paid for mandatory pre- and post-shift work.

The case involved hourly employees at Anheuser-Busch's Williamsburg brewery. Employees claimed they performed a variety of unpaid activities outside their scheduled shifts, including donning and doffing personal protective equipment, complying with COVID-era screening protocols, attending shift-handoff meetings, and putting away tools. The district court certified a class of essentially all hourly brewery employees, concluding that the central question was whether Anheuser-Busch had a policy of paying only scheduled shift time despite requiring additional work.

The 4th Circuit wasn't buying it.

The court's opinion builds on its 2024 decision in Stafford v. Bojangles' Restaurants, which warned courts against defining common questions at too high a level of abstraction. According to Judge Wilkinson, broad formulations like "Did the company fail to pay employees for required work?" sound common, but they often conceal the very differences that make class treatment inappropriate.

And there were lots of differences here.

Some employees participated in shift-handoff meetings. Others didn't. Some employees wore certain PPE at home before arriving at work. Others changed at the brewery. Some employees worked during the COVID-screening period. Others were hired after those protocols ended. Some workers were governed by one version of Virginia's wage laws, while others were subject to a materially different statutory framework after legislative amendments took effect in 2022.

Those distinctions mattered because liability couldn't be determined with a single answer applicable to everyone. Instead, the court saw a case that would devolve into a series of employee-by-employee inquiries about what work was performed, where it was performed, when it was performed, and whether it was legally compensable.

That's poison for Rule 23's commonality and predominance requirements.

For employers, this decision reinforces an increasingly important trend in class-action jurisprudence. Courts are becoming less willing to certify sweeping workplace classes based solely on generalized allegations of companywide policies. Instead, they are demanding evidence that liability can actually be determined through common proof.

That's especially significant in off-the-clock cases. While plaintiffs often frame these lawsuits around a single alleged policy, the underlying facts frequently vary from employee to employee, department to department, location to location, and even shift to shift.

The 4th Circuit's message is straightforward: courts must look beneath the label of a "common policy" and examine whether the employees' actual experiences are sufficiently similar to justify collective treatment. If answering the liability question requires hundreds of mini-trials, class certification is likely off the table.

Employers should take note. A well-developed factual record showing differences in job duties, work practices, locations, schedules, and compensation procedures can be a powerful weapon against class certification. Overby demonstrates that even where employees allege a common wage-and-hour violation, meaningful variations among workers may be enough to keep the case from proceeding as a class action.

Class actions remain an important tool for addressing widespread workplace violations. But as the 4th Circuit reminded everyone in Overby, a common-policy allegation is not enough to certify a class if the underlying facts aren't common too.

Why your noncompete agreement could become "Exhibit A" in a discrimination lawsuit. The DOL's World Cup warning is really an overtime compliance warning WIRTW #801: the 'dads' edition Pride Night, Bible Verses, and When Title VII Protections Collide Regrets, I've had a few.