The Second Proceeding: What the State Bar Does After a Court Sanctions You for AI Citations

Two proceedings, not one

A sanctions order and a disciplinary case answer different questions. The court asks what is needed to address the conduct in front of it. The bar asks whether the lawyer should continue to hold a licence, and it can reach conduct across a career rather than a single filing. Completing the first does not resolve the second ^[1][2].

The most common misreading of an AI-sanctions story is that the fine was the outcome. In several of the reported matters, the fine was the fastest and least consequential part.

The forums differ in purpose. A court imposing sanctions is vindicating its own authority and managing its docket, which is why the remedies tend to be case-specific: strike the filing, shift fees, disqualify counsel, deter repetition. A bar disciplinary body is regulating the profession, so its remedies attach to the licence itself, through probation, suspension, or disbarment.

They also differ in timing, and that gap is where firms get comfortable. A sanctions order lands within the litigation. A disciplinary outcome can arrive a year or more later, after an investigation, charges, and either a stipulation or a trial in the bar court. A lawyer who has paid a sanction and moved on may be in the middle of a proceeding they are not thinking about.

Our analysis of Johnson v. Dunn ends where this article begins. That court directed its clerk to serve the sanctions order on the General Counsel of the Alabama State Bar and any other applicable licensing authorities "for further proceedings as appropriate." This is what "further proceedings" means.

The referral is often automatic in effect even where it is discretionary in form. A published order describing fabricated authority, sent to a licensing body, is a complaint that body cannot easily decline to examine.

What the California records actually show

The licensee records are public, searchable, and more precise than the coverage. Mostafavi: discipline entered 6/26/2026, case 26-O-30120, "Discipline, probation; no actual susp.", status Active. Ardestani: discipline entered 8/7/2026, case 26-O-30271, "Discipline w/actual suspension", status "Not eligible to practice law in CA" ^[1][2].

Anyone can check these. The State Bar of California publishes a licensee search showing licence status alongside a dated table of disciplinary and administrative history, and that table is the authoritative account of what a lawyer's record says. The Bar separately publishes a running list of recent disciplinary actions, which is where these matters surface before they are reported anywhere else ^[4].

It is worth reading the records rather than the reporting, because they differ in details that matter. Press coverage of these matters described a stipulation approved in April and a "stayed one-year suspension." The licensee records show discipline entered on June 26 and August 7, 2026 respectively, with the operative descriptions quoted above ^[1][2]. A stipulation being approved and discipline taking effect are different events on different dates.

The contrast between the two records is the substance of this article. Both concern AI-fabricated authority in filings. One produced probation without actual suspension and a lawyer who is practising. The other produced actual suspension and a lawyer who currently cannot practise.

Mostafavi's is the record with the clearer public trail, because the underlying conduct is described in a published court opinion. Noland v. Land of the Free sanctioned him $10,000 for appellate briefs in which the court found the overwhelming majority of quotations fabricated, and it referred him to the State Bar ^[3]. The disciplinary entry is the other end of that referral.

Stayed versus actual suspension: the distinction that decides everything

A suspension that is stayed is a suspension that does not take effect unless probation is violated. An actual suspension removes the right to practise for its term. The two appear similar in a headline and are entirely different in a practice, which is why the licensee record's wording matters more than the summary ^[1][2].

Discipline is frequently reported as "a one-year suspension" when the operative order is a stayed suspension with probation. The difference is not cosmetic.

A stayed suspension is conditional. The suspension is imposed and then held in abeyance while the lawyer serves a probationary term subject to conditions, which commonly include reporting requirements, coursework, and compliance obligations. Meet the conditions and the suspension is never served. Fail them and it can be imposed.

An actual suspension is served. For its duration the lawyer cannot practise, must notify clients, and must wind down or transfer active matters. Ardestani's record showing status "Not eligible to practice law in CA" is what that looks like from outside ^[2].

For a firm, the operational consequences diverge completely. A partner on probation with a stayed suspension continues to bill, appear, and supervise, subject to conditions. A partner serving an actual suspension cannot, and their matters have to move, which is a client-notification and staffing problem rather than a compliance one.

This is also where the tactical reality of a stipulation sits. Negotiating discipline down from actual to stayed suspension is often the difference the lawyer is actually fighting for, and it turns substantially on mitigation, which is the subject of a later section.

"Moral turpitude" attached to a grossly negligent act

The charge Ardestani stipulated to was a grossly negligent act involving moral turpitude, together with failure to perform with competence. The significant part is the first half: moral turpitude, a category lawyers associate with dishonesty, attached to conduct characterised as grossly negligent rather than intentional.

Most lawyers carry an intuition that moral turpitude means deliberate dishonesty, and that a genuine mistake, however careless, falls into a different and lesser category. This charge complicates that intuition.

Gross negligence is not the same as intent to deceive. A lawyer who files a brief containing fabricated authority because they did not check it has not, on that description, set out to mislead anyone. The charge nonetheless carried the moral turpitude label.

The reasoning is not hard to reconstruct, even without reading the underlying stipulation. Filing authority you have not verified is a representation to the court that you have. Doing so with sufficient carelessness can be treated as culpability of a different order than an ordinary competence failure, because the representation itself was hollow.

That matters for how firms think about exposure. "We did not intend to mislead anyone" is a true statement in nearly every one of these cases and it has not been doing the protective work lawyers expect. The courts reached a parallel conclusion by a different route in Johnson v. Dunn, finding recklessness tantamount to bad faith on facts where nobody set out to deceive.

The second charge is the more familiar one. Failure to perform with competence is the disciplinary analogue of the duty this site has covered in our guide to technology competence under Model Rule 1.1, and it is the charge that most directly describes filing something you did not read.

Charge characterisations here are drawn from the public description of the stipulated discipline. The underlying stipulation and any findings are the authoritative statement of what was charged and admitted, and disciplinary standards differ by jurisdiction.

The charges the trial counsel's office is bringing

Two further California matters were charged rather than stipulated. Omid E. Khalifeh faces six counts over a nonexistent case citation in a federal trademark matter and falsely certifying that he had verified it. Steven T. Romeyn faces counts including failure to act with reasonable diligence and misrepresenting a filing's accuracy, over a personal injury pleading containing numerous fabricated authorities.

Charged matters are allegations that have not been resolved, and both should be read that way. What they show is the shape of the theory the Office of Chief Trial Counsel is using, which is more informative for planning than any single outcome.

The Khalifeh charges reportedly centre on a nonexistent citation in a federal trademark matter and, separately, on falsely certifying that it had been verified. That second element is the one to notice. The certification is charged as its own wrong, distinct from the citation being wrong.

The Romeyn charges reportedly include failure to act with reasonable diligence and misrepresenting the accuracy of the filing, arising from a personal injury pleading containing numerous fabricated authorities. Again the misrepresentation sits alongside the underlying error rather than being subsumed in it.

The pattern across all four California matters is consistent: the fabricated citation is the occasion, and the charge is about the representation the lawyer made concerning it. The State Bar's Chief Trial Counsel framed the office's position in terms that apply regardless of tooling, saying attorneys remain fully responsible for verifying the accuracy of their work whether they rely on traditional research methods or emerging technologies.

That framing should be familiar by now. It is the same conclusion the Ninth Circuit reached about the point of signing and the Del Biaggio court reached about delegation: the tool is not the subject, the certification is.

Why the discipline record outlasts the sanction

A sanction is an event in a case file. A disciplinary entry is a permanent, dated line on a public licensee record that anyone can retrieve by name in seconds, and it sits beside the lawyer's admission date for the rest of their career.

The records used for this article took under a minute each to retrieve. That is the exposure, stated plainly.

A monetary sanction lives in a docket. Finding it requires knowing the case existed. A disciplinary entry lives in a public database indexed by the lawyer's name and licence number, and it is the first thing returned when a prospective client, an opposing party, a general counsel evaluating outside counsel, or a lateral-hiring committee looks the lawyer up.

The entry is also dated and permanent in a way that shapes how it reads later. "Discipline w/actual suspension" beside a 2026 date is a fact about that lawyer's record in 2036, whatever has happened since.

This connects to the exposure analysis in our post on filing a brief with a fake AI citation, which works through the monetary end. The figures there are mostly modest. The licence record is the part that does not have a number and does not conclude.

For a firm, the consequence is that client-facing exposure runs through the disciplinary record rather than the sanction. Outside counsel guidelines increasingly require disclosure of disciplinary history, and a client running periodic checks on its panel firms will find an entry without anyone telling them about it.

How a court sanction becomes a bar case

Three routes. The court refers the matter directly, as in Johnson v. Dunn where the clerk was directed to serve the order on the state bar and other licensing authorities. A published opinion is seen by the regulator or reported to it. Or the lawyer self-reports, which many jurisdictions require in defined circumstances.

Firms sometimes treat the referral as a discretionary step a court might not take. In practice each of the three routes leads to the same place, and only one of them is within the lawyer's control.

Direct referral is the clearest. Johnson v. Dunn ordered the clerk to serve the sanctions order on the General Counsel of the Alabama State Bar and any other applicable licensing authorities, and separately required the attorneys to provide a list of every jurisdiction in which they were licensed within twenty-four hours. That second order is what makes the referral comprehensive rather than local.

Publication does similar work without a referral. Noland was the first published California opinion on AI-fabricated citations, and publication in a reporter is a durable public notice that a regulator does not need to be told about twice ^[3].

Self-reporting is the route lawyers control and the one most likely to be mishandled. Many jurisdictions require a lawyer to report certain sanctions or findings within a defined period, and the requirement is jurisdiction-specific. A lawyer licensed in several states may have several obligations running on several clocks, which is precisely the situation in which one gets missed.

The practical point is that a firm's decision is not whether the regulator learns about it. It is whether the regulator learns about it from the firm first, and what the firm has done in the interval.

What mitigates in the second proceeding

The contrast between the two California outcomes turns substantially on mitigation, and disciplinary mitigation rewards the same things Johnson v. Dunn rewarded: prompt correction, candour, remediation, and demonstrated steps to prevent recurrence. The firm's pre-existing policy is not what moves it.

This is where the two tracks converge on a single practical lesson, and it is the most useful thing in this article.

Johnson v. Dunn found the firm's existing AI policies aggravating and the response after discovery mitigating, expressly citing an internal review and an independent outside investigation as reassuring the court that suspension was unnecessary. Disciplinary bodies weigh a comparable set: whether the lawyer corrected promptly, was candid, cooperated, took remedial steps, and can show what has changed.

The disciplinary terms reported in these matters reflect that emphasis. Coursework on the risks and benefits of AI tools, technology-focused continuing education, and probationary conditions are forward-looking rather than punitive. They are the regulator specifying what remediation looks like when the lawyer has not specified it themselves. The Bar publishes its own AI ethics and technology resources for licensees, which is a reasonable indication of the baseline it expects a competent practitioner to have absorbed ^[5].

The inference for a firm facing a referral is direct: arrive having already done what the regulator would order. A completed independent audit, a documented change in workflow, and evidence that verification now produces a record are worth considerably more before charges than after them.

That argues for building the record continuously rather than assembling it under pressure, which is the same conclusion our guide on proving verification to a court reaches. A firm that can show what it checked, when, and by whom is answering both proceedings with one artifact.

What to do when a referral is made

Treat it as a separate matter with its own counsel, its own clock, and its own record. The sanctions response and the disciplinary response are not the same document, the multi-jurisdiction reporting obligations run independently, and what the firm does in the interval between referral and charges is what mitigation is made of.

The failure mode is treating the referral as an aftershock of the sanction rather than the start of something. By the time charges arrive the mitigation window has largely closed.

The steps below are the ones that are available in the interval and cannot be reconstructed later. None of them substitutes for engaging counsel who handles professional responsibility matters, which should be the first of them.

1. Engage separate counsel for the disciplinary matterThe lawyer defending the underlying case is not positioned to defend the licence. Professional responsibility defence is its own practice and the interests are not identical.
2. Map every reporting obligation you holdSelf-reporting requirements are jurisdiction-specific and run on independent clocks. A lawyer licensed in several states may owe several reports, and Johnson v. Dunn required exactly that list within twenty-four hours.
3. Commission an independent audit, not an internal oneJohnson v. Dunn treated the outside investigation as a distinct source of reassurance from the firm's own review. A firm clearing itself is a weaker signal than an outside firm reaching the same conclusion.
4. Change the workflow and be able to show itRegulators impose coursework and conditions when the lawyer has not demonstrated remediation. Arriving with a documented change already made is materially different from agreeing to make one.
5. Preserve everything about the original incidentThe disciplinary proceeding will ask what happened and when. The contemporaneous record from the litigation is the evidence, and it cannot be created afterwards.
6. Decide the client-notification position earlyAn actual suspension forces matters to move. Whether that is a controlled transition or an emergency depends on when the firm started planning for the possibility.