Mr. Lundsford is not just a partner at Butler Snow, however. He is in fact a Deputy Attorney General of the State of Alabama, and it was in that capacity that he was defending the Alabama Department of Corrections and supervising the work of the other Butler Snow attorneys on this case.
I think it’s good actually that the prisons have counsel of this quality
That might be true if we could assume every judge and magistrate (not to mention plaintiff's attorneys) can and will perform the checking needed on filings from such counsel. I'm skeptical that such falsehoods will always be caught.
As you all know, I am not an attorney. But god damn, I am pretty sure these are not words that any attorney wants to see written about them by a Federal judge.
Yikes
The amazing thing about this one is that the law firm actually had a robust internal protocol re AI use that was designed to prevent this, and the attorneys whose conduct was at issue just disregarded it. That did not improve the court's opinion of their conduct.
Oh, yeah — when the OTSC first dropped, Deputy AG Lundsford over here’s first response was to ask if he could just not show up for the hearing. (The court declined.)
Mr. Lundsford’s general approach to citation appears to be “trust me, bro, as I have trusted you.” (The cites are to his own declaration. WILD to imagine putting that shit in writing, yeah?)
I'm not even a lawyer, but uh...
Here’s Mr. Lundsford’s declaration in full, you can read it for yourself storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
“In any event, Mr. Lunsford made clear that performing (or verifying) legal research for each case is not something that he requires of the team he leads.” Y’ALL.
That is definitely a choice. As a programmer, I always always always double check AI-generated code, but I'm sure it's not as important when it's only someone's freedom on the line.
“According to Mr. Lunsford's own testimony, he did not make any effort to verify the contents of the motion to compel before authorizing its filing, and it would have been extremely unusual for him to do so.” Damn, your Honor, I didn’t know you could cook
This sounds like the standard process - I've never heard of a senior signing lawyer personally verifying the contents of a motion. That said, the signing lawyer should still face discipline - that's the point of the signature, and he should have set up protections to prevent this kind of thing.
It’s not the standard process where I work, I can tell you that.
Huh, are you at a firm or gov/nonprofit? Seems like a hard sell to get a client to pay partner rates for cite checking, but it would certainly prevent this kind of failure.
“Indifference,” “complete personal disinterest,” and “utter disregard for the truth.” Only the best for the Alabama Department of Corrections!
The court does not approve either of Mr. Lundsford’s attempts to “leave the mess for someone else” nor his “explanation in greater fullness of how very little work he personally puts in to be sure that his team's motions tell the truth”
Mr. Lundsford, by the by, “remains the Attorney General’s counsel of choice.”
Not sure if I should go with a "please shut up" gif or a gif about bad lawyering. This is very much saying you couldn't have committed the murder because you were doing a bankrobbery in another state that day.
Oh he’s toast. Ooooofffff
Yeah. I think we're seeing a systemic (though not ubiquitous!) failing of the legal world being dramatically exposed.
