The Florida Bar News June 18, 2026

‘You owe it to yourselves and you owe it to the profession’

Florida lawyers have a duty to familiarize themselves with AI, a technology that is already transforming the practice of law and the rules of court procedure, veteran judges warned a symposium June 17 at The Florida Bar Convention in Orlando.

“We all have a basic requirement to competency and something everybody is going to have to do on this front is at least understand the broad concepts of how these tools work,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Nicholas Mizell, who presides in Ft. Myers in the Middle District of Florida.

Pensacola Judge David Langham, Florida Deputy Chief Judge of Compensation Claims, praised the audience for filling a hotel ballroom for an early morning CLE.

“Folks like you have got to get out in the legal community, you need to start telling your friends and neighbors that this thing is here, and the implications,” he said. “You owe it to yourselves and you owe it to the profession.”

Mizell and Langham were co-presenters for the Standing Committee on Technology’s 2026 Symposium, “Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and the Ethics of Lawyering in a Digital Age.”

Langham has delivered thousands of presentations to professional groups, published more than 40 articles in professional publications, and thousands of blog posts regarding law, technology, and professionalism.

Prior to taking the bench in 2019, Mizell practiced civil trial and appellate litigation for nearly 20 years, including federal multi-district litigation. A federal judicial liaison to the Trial Lawyers Section, Mizell serves on a recently formed Middle District of Florida AI committee.

Langham reminded the audience that on May 28 the Florida Supreme Court, acting on its own motion, amended Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.515 (Representation by the Signer).

The amendment, which requires attorneys and self-represented litigants to certify that legal authorities cited in filings are accurate, took effect June 15. It also authorizes judges to impose sanctions for non-compliance, Langham noted.

“We’ll probably need that, because according to the numbers, we’re seeing a 10%  to 15% rise in pro se filings across court systems,” he said.

Mizell said a Middle District colleague, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Mizelle, has proposed a similar rule to the federal Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure. The flood of AI-generated court filings by pro se litigants will slow the resolution of cases, Mizell warned.

“It’s not just more filings, but each filing used to be, at least with pro se litigants, a few hand-written pages, and now it’s 90 pages,” he said. “It’s not just creating more work for us, but for you,”

Senior U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock recently imposed sweeping sanctions in the Northern District of Mississippi after a beginning lawyer repeatedly filed court documents riddled with AI hallucinations in “the most egregious example of poor lawyering with AI in the past year,” Langham noted.

Even worse, Langham said, was the free AI platform the lawyer used.

“She was using Grok,” he said. “It’s like citing Mad Magazine in your briefs.”

Aycock ordered the firm’s partners to personally audit every document the lawyer filed since she joined the firm, and to report to the court how many of the documents contained AI hallucinations, Langham said.

“Is that appropriate?” Langham asked. “Well, the rules regulating The Florida Bar say that as a member of a firm, an owner or a partner, you’re responsible for everything that goes on.”

VIEWS AND CONCLUSIONS EXPRESSED IN ARTICLES HEREIN ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF FLORIDA BAR STAFF, OFFICIALS, OR BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FLORIDA BAR.