Sethi and Rounds, and the two-year disclosure order

What happened

• The caseLNU v. Blanche, an immigration matter. The attorneys were Orange County practitioners Mike Singh Sethi and William Rounds.
• The defectsBriefs containing non-existent cases, invented quotations, and grossly inaccurate descriptions of real law. All three failure modes in one filing.
• Money$2,500 each.
• SuspensionBoth suspended from practice before the Ninth Circuit for six months.
• The firmOrdered to disclose generative AI use in future filings for two years.

As reported, the court had ruled in the clients’ favour, halting the deportation of three family members. The sanctions followed anyway.

Why the disclosure order is the important part

Every AI standing order on the orders page applies prospectively to everyone appearing before that judge. This is different. It is a remedial obligation, imposed on one firm, after the fact, running for two years, and it attaches to the firm rather than to the two individuals who filed the briefs.

Compare the parallel remedies elsewhere. British Columbia, in Zhang v. Chen, ordered counsel to review every other file before the court and report within thirty days, which looks backwards. The Ninth Circuit looks forwards. Between them they define the range of what a court will now order beyond a payment.

What it changes

It is the first American order that makes AI disclosure an ongoing operational obligation with a compliance burden attached, and it lands on a firm rather than a person. A firm under it has to know, for every filing across every matter for two years, whether generative AI touched the document and be able to say so. That is not a policy question. It is a records system, imposed by a court.

It is also the sharpest illustration that winning does not help. The clients prevailed. The lawyers were suspended.

Sources

• Ninth Circuit sanctions order in LNU v. Blanche, 2026. Not opened from this session.
• Recorded from contemporaneous reporting, including Bloomberg Law and the Metropolitan News-Enterprise. We carry no quotation from the order because we have not read it.

Related

• The full sanctions record
• Every verified AI standing order
• Zhang v. Chen, the backward-looking equivalent
• Nebraska, the other US suspension

Checked 5 August 2026. The order was not read at source. Treat the detail as reported until it is pulled.

Common questions

What did the Ninth Circuit do in the Sethi and Rounds matter?

It sanctioned two Orange County immigration attorneys whose briefs contained non-existent cases, invented quotations and grossly inaccurate descriptions of real law. Each was fined $2,500. Both were suspended from practice before the Ninth Circuit for six months. Their firm was ordered to disclose generative AI use in future filings for two years.

Is a court-ordered AI disclosure obligation unusual?

A two-year, firm-wide, prospective one is. Standing orders requiring disclosure apply to everyone in a judge's court from the outset. This was imposed as a remedy on one firm after the fact, which makes it the closest this record comes to a court-supervised compliance regime.

Did the clients suffer?

Not in the outcome. As reported, the court had ruled in favour of the attorneys' clients, halting the deportation of three family members. The sanctions were imposed notwithstanding that the clients had won, which underlines that the duty runs to the court rather than to the result.

Which US courts have suspended lawyers over AI citations?

On this record, the Ninth Circuit suspended two attorneys from practice before that court for six months, and the Nebraska Supreme Court suspended an Omaha attorney from the practice of law until further notice in April 2026.