A.I. may be new and scary, but the legal profession should embrace it, not bogeyman it.
One of the benefits of being a licensed Florida attorney is that, every month, without fail, I receive a nice, crisp copy of The Florida Bar News. This month was like no other as I recently received the September 2024 issue. Something I’ve done since very early in my career is to flip immediately to the Disciplinary Actions section, and I read each and every one of the cases mentioned in the section.
Some of you may be thinking that I do it for gossip purposes (“ooh, who got in trouble?”), but I like to think that I’m monitoring real-life examples to ensure I stay in the correct ethics lane. I know that I’m looking for the right reasons because when I find that rare issue that contains no disciplinary actions, I’m very happy.
When I received this month’s issue, I was shocked by a headline that appeared just above the fold:
“AI filing misappropriates Florida attorney’s identity.”
Wow. Scary. What a headline.
As a person with an extreme interest in AI, and also as an attorney who doesn’t want his identity to be misappropriated, I was immediately hooked by this “foldbait” (coined it?). “What’s this crazy AI up to now?” I thought to myself as I skipped (delayed) my monthly ethics lesson and went straight for the story. One paragraph in, I instantly recognized the name of the attorney who was affected by this incident, Matthew Weidner. Back in the day when I was a consumer debt attorney, Mr. Weidner was well-known in the consumer law circles as a prominent foreclosure defense attorney. I was even more reeled in now.
Although I discovered the story in paper format (left), below is a link to the online version of the story, if you’d like to read it for yourself.
According to the Article.
According to the article, a defendant in a lawsuit hired a “litigation services” company to assist him. The article stated that the company “used generative AI to scoop up some of Weidner’s old work in a previous case.” Then, that previous work product was regurgitated (my word, not The News’), revised, and provided to the defendant to be filed in his case. And while the document was modified to include the party and caption information from the instant case, neither the litigation services company nor the defendant had the foresight to remove Mr. Weidner’s Florida Bar Number from the signature block of the pleading before it was filed.
Upon discovering this mix-up, the plaintiff in the lawsuit asked the trial court to impose sanctions against the defendant for fraud on the court. The article goes on to state that this incident is a cautionary tale about AI-generated legal documents. It sure is! Or at least I thought.
Yeeooh, boy.
I was intrigued by the story and was curious to learn more. So I did what all knowledgeable, seasoned, experienced lawyers do when setting out to research a complex legal topic — I went to google.com and I searched it up.
Doing this led me to other articles that had been written about this incident, some of which provided the defendant’s name and the county in which the case was pending (the article in the Bar News, understandably, did not include this). With this, I searched court records and was able to locate the actual case and began reviewing the filings, including the culprit filing — the one allegedly created with the assistance of AI, the Defendant’s Answer and Affirmative Defenses. I also found some others — I found the plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions and I found the defendant’s Response to the Motion for Sanctions. Interestingly, the defendant’s Response contained a signed sworn declaration from the principal of Rezidential Group, Inc., Keith Bray. Rezidential Group, Inc. is the litigation services company wrapped up in this whole situation.
Wanting to get to the bottom of this to hopefully prevent AI from stealing my identity, I read through each of the documents, which proved insightful and revealed a number of details that weren’t facially apparent from the article in The Florida Bar News.
Not a single mention.
A close examination of the documents revealed a telling story, one replete with red flags and OMGs. The allegations of the Motion for Sanctions, the defensive posturing in the defendant’s Response, and the damning admissions contained in Mr. Bray’s sworn declaration paint a picture that is, in my opinion, classic unlicensed practice of law – textbook. But! Notably absent from the four corners of the motion, the response, and the sworn declaration is any reference, whatsoever, to AI or artificial intelligence. Not a single mention of it.
Just the Facts.
Plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions
Below are the key allegations from the plaintiff’s motion for sanctions.
- The defendant filed an answer which reflected an attorney named Keith Bray, but the Florida Bar number that was included in the pleading belonged to attorney Matthew D. Weidner.
- The address shown for Keith Bray was a former office address for Mr. Weidner.
- Matthew Weidner did not represent the defendant and did not provide permission for his bar number to be used in the case.
- There is no attorney named Keith Bray licensed to practice law in Florida.
- An individual by the name of Keith Hammond Bray was disbarred in California in 2015.
- The E-Service portal included an email address that tied to Rezidential Group, Inc.
- The plaintiff alleged that the defendant engaged in a fraudulent scheme to interfere with the court’s ability to adjudicate the matter.
Defendant’s Response
Below are the points asserted by the defendant in the Response to the Motion for Sanctions. Based on the totality of circumstances, a reasonable inference is that Mr. Bray prepared this response on behalf of the defendant; but what a person and his litigation services company do behind a word processor is none of my business. If it’s quoted, I pulled it right from the document.
- “This is a simple cut-and-paste mistake”
- “At no time did Defendant (or any agent, third party, or attorney on defendant’s behalf”) intend to misappropriate or intentionally utilize the name of another attorney or their bar number.”
- The Defendant retained Rezidential Group, Inc. for “pro bono legal services” to assist him in trying to save his residence from foreclosure.
- In some cases, the Rezidential Group outsources client matters such as the Defendant’s if their requisite matters call for local counsel familiar with the rules of civil procedure.
- In some circumstances, the client of Rezidential Group, Inc. is unable to afford local counsel, in which case “Rezidential Group will prepare documents on behalf of the client while concurrently searching to find a local attorney that may take the case at a discounted rate.”
- In this case, the defendant required immediate assistance with the foreclosure action and so, “in an effort to bypass reviewing all of the local rules related to pleadings, the Rezidential Group occasionally utilizes [an online database] by downloading numerous pleadings from [the online database] and that derive from the jurisdiction or even courthouse. Those pleadings are then used as a template when preparing the appropriate complaint, motion, answer, or response.”
- Rezidential Group, Inc. downloaded an Answer from a 2009 Pinellas County case. This was the work product of attorney Weidner.
- “The signature line bearing the name of attorney, MATTHEW D. WEIDNER, and/or his bar number utilized on the Defendant’s Answer/proof of service filed with this court derives from the [2009 case Answer], plain-and-simple. After the PDF was downloaded from the [online database] and converted to a Microsoft Word document, Mr. Weidner’s name and signature line were not properly edited. This was just a mistake that was not caught by the attorneys, other legal staff members, or Keith Bray from the Rezidential Group.”
- “This was an honest mistake, by an office that provides free or discounted legal services for those outside the State of California.”
- “At no time did Keith Bray intentionally try and pose as another attorney from Florida. Counsel, opposing counsel, and the offended parties can open any web browser, access [the online database], locate, and download the very same pleading.”
Sworn Declaration from Keith Bray
Below are the assertions by Keith Bray contained within his sworn declaration, which was signed under penalties of perjury:
- Keith Bray is one of the owners of Rezidential Group, Inc.
- According to Bray, “We help these clients get their money back from the very “loan mod mills” that prolonged and increased their distress—if feasible—and quickly plug them into either a state program, such as Florida’s now defunct Homeowner Assistance Fund, bankruptcy, civil litigation, or other alternative if the facts of their respective cases call for it.”
- According to Bray, “We are a non-profit and we do seek out local counsel if we are able to handoff the client and their office is willing to charge the client a nominal fee.”
- According to Bray, “In some cases, like the Defendant’s case, we did turn over his matter to a local attorney in Florida. However, that attorney later had a change of heart, and so we agreed to help the Defendant with his paperwork until he could locate someone to represent him.”
- According to Bray, “In order to ensure the pleadings that are filed conform to the local rules of the respective courthouses, I personally download pleadings from [the online database] and reference those pleadings against the local rules to ensure compliance.”
There I fixed it.
This is a serious and concerning situation that absolutely impacts our industry and so The Florida Bar News should, of course, have written the article to raise awareness. However, in my opinion, rather than sensationalizing the AI angle (which I still have not found evidence to support), the headline should have been:
“Florida attorney’s identity misappropriated by unlicensed practice of law, and not by AI at all.”
This serious situation can and should be dealt with appropriately. The article in the Bar News did say that a UPL complaint had been filed. Good. I hope that there is a fair and just investigation into the matter. And I hope that, if substantiated, they throw the book at the perpetrator. But that is where the blame should start and end – the actions of a human. This was not a case of Chatbots Gone Wild. There was no prompting or hallucinating to hang this bogus e-filing on. ChatGPT and Bard (I still call him Bard) were home sleeping. There was not a single mention of AI, not an iota. Nope, this was nothing more than the actions of a person who, in my opinion based upon his own admission, engaged in the unlicensed practice of law in Florida.
Rather than implicating AI when it wasn’t the culprit, the more immediate and pressing concern here should be to ensure that our existing body of laws designed to address this bad human behavior are utilized and enforce – not to make AI a bogeyman. Save that for when it really happens.
The Unlicensed Practice of Law.
The unlicensed practice of law in Florida is a serious offense with significant consequences. It not only undermines the integrity of the legal profession but also poses a risk to the public. Individuals who engage in this practice may face criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment. Additionally, they can be subject to civil lawsuits and administrative actions that could impact their ability to ever become licensed in the future. The unlicensed practice of law can lead to serious legal, financial, and reputational harm, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that only qualified attorneys are providing legal services.
My final thought.
There are over 100,000 attorneys in Florida, all of whom I assume receive the same copy of The Florida Bar News that I do. And while I’m hopeful that all of them pick up their copy each month, chomping at the bit to read some letters to the editor and to brush up on ethics – one story about commingled trust funds at a time – I’m sure that a great number do not open the issue at all. And even for those who opened it, I’m positive that an even smaller percentage took the extra step to locate and research the underlying case filings. Therefore, that sensational headline, parked just above the fold, is now fodder for all my Ludditical colleagues who fear the Reaper – the AI that is rounding the corner to steal our lunch money.
AI is coming whether we like it or not, and it has the potential to revolutionize the legal profession unlike anything that’s happened during my career, and likely during the careers of anyone reading these words right now. AI can be both the biggest benefit to our profession while also simultaneously the largest threat, and so it needs to be treated with the respect that it deserves. You don’t ignore the most magnificent rose you’ve ever seen because it has thorns; you just handle it a little more carefully. But if we look to vilify AI at every turn by telling scary stories of the AI bogeyman, we are doing our profession and, ultimately, our clients, a disservice.
Epilogue
I always love that part of a movie during the credits when they tell you what became of the characters after the movie ended. In that spirit I want to share something that happened to Keith Bray, not long after his sworn declaration was filed in Pinellas County in which he basically admitted to the unlicensed practice of law in Florida. It’s important to note that what happened afterwards literally had nothing to do with what happened in the Pinellas County case. But, where there’s smoke there’s fire, and this thing’s a’ smolderin’.
On April 22, 2024, the bankruptcy court for the District of Oregon entered a judgment against Keith Bray and his company Rezidential Group, Inc. in an adversary proceeding that was filed against them by the United States Trustee.
A press release from the Department of Justice provides a brief synopsis of what happened in that situation to lead to the enforcement action:
Bray led the debtors to believe he was a licensed attorney in California and told them bankruptcy could help save their home from foreclosure. He directed them to hand copy information he provided onto blank forms and file them with the bankruptcy court. Bray was actually a disbarred attorney who attempted to avoid detection by impersonating a licensed attorney in communications with the chapter 13 trustee. The court’s decision noted similar conduct by Bray and Rezidential Group in several other cases in other districts.
The bankruptcy court’s judgment entered against Keith Bray and Rezidential Group, Inc. did a number of things of import:
- it assessed fines in the amount of $22,500 against the defendants, payable to the U.S. Trustee;
- it ordered the defendants to pay the debtors in the underlying bankruptcy case $7,990;
- it ordered the defendants to pay the underlying debtors $3,995 as disgorged fees (But I thought the company was non profit and pro bono?); and, finally,
- it prohibited the defendants from acting as bankruptcy petition preparers in the District of Oregon, including the following:
- preparing a document for filing by a debtor in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Oregon or the United States District Court for the District of Oregon in connection with a case under title 11 of the United States Code;
- engaging in the unauthorized practice of law, including providing legal advice to a potential or current debtor whether over the internet, via email, or by any other means; and
- using the term “legal” or similar terms in advertisements, including on the Rezidential Group, Inc. website.
Fin