Florida appeals court warns that AI-generated filings burden judges

What the court objected to

The Fourth District Court of Appeal said the attorney’s filings contained what the judges called “AI garbage.” They also described the arguments as “nonsensical arguments shooting in every direction,” warning that this kind of material can obstruct the work of courts.

The concern extends beyond lawyers. Judges said both attorneys and people representing themselves may use AI to generate long, confusing documents quickly. That can cost the opposing side time and money, frustrate those involved and add hard-to-follow material to already overloaded court dockets.

The attorney, family-law practitioner Jaclyn Soroka, denied using AI to prepare legal documents in an interview with Law.com. She said she does not use AI to draft court filings in any of her cases.

Volume is not an argument

The panel said some of the language in the filings would be difficult for even an AI supercomputer to understand. Its standard was simpler: legal arguments must be clear to the people who have to deal with them — the court, opposing counsel and the parties.

That is the practical risk here. AI can reduce the effort needed to produce pages, but the court’s warning is that it may shift the work onto everyone else: judges and opposing parties must still identify what is relevant, coherent and legally sound.

I think the more important question is not whether AI was used in this particular filing — Soroka denies it — but how courts will distinguish careless work from machine-generated work without turning that distinction into a substitute for evaluating the arguments themselves.

For now, the ruling draws a clear line around the obligation that remains unchanged: lawyers are expected to submit arguments people can understand. If AI makes it easier to file more material, that standard matters more, not less.