N.D. Cal.: Civil Standing Order Section VII.C: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Filings (…
Magistrate Judge Peter H. Kang · U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
Verified September 30, 2026
- Citation
- Civil Standing Order Section VII.C: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Filings (Cases Assigned to Magistrate Judge Kang)
- Order date
- July 14, 2023
Summary
Any brief or pleading drafted with any AI tool must be identified as such in its title or pleading caption, in a table preceding the body text, or by a separate Notice filed contemporaneously.
What does the order require?
- Any brief or pleading drafted with any AI tool must be identified as such in its title or pleading caption, in a table preceding the body text, or by a separate Notice filed contemporaneously.
- Counsel must maintain records sufficient to identify, if requested by the Court, those portions of the text created or drafted by an AI tool.
- Parties and counsel may not file any briefs, pleadings, materials, other documents, or argument that contain AI-hallucinated citations to law, fictitious or non-existent case or legal citations, or any uncorroboratable assertions of law or fact.
- Failure to confirm accuracy of AI-generated citations is grounds for potential sanctions.
- Scope expressly excludes back-office tools (timekeeping, accounting) and traditional legal research, word-processing, spellchecking, grammar-checking and formatting tools (Lexis, Westlaw, Word, Acrobat); includes generative AI, LLMs, NLP, ML, and neural-network tools used to draft text submitted to court.
Practice areas: federal civil
What the order requires
Magistrate Judge Peter H. Kang’s civil standing order, Section VII.C, is the most comprehensive AI provision among the federal chambers orders surveyed for this tracker. In force since at least July 14, 2023 and carried unchanged into the July 16, 2025 revision, it imposes four obligations on counsel and pro se parties using AI to prepare any filing in his cases: (1) caption-level disclosure (in the title, a table preceding the body, or a separate Notice); (2) recordkeeping sufficient to identify which portions of the text were AI-generated; (3) a categorical bar on filings containing hallucinated citations or uncorroboratable factual assertions; and (4) sanctions exposure for failure to confirm or double-check the accuracy of AI-generated citations and assertions.
The scope definition is unusually precise. The order names traditional legal research, word-processing, spellchecking, grammar-checking and formatting tools (Lexis, Westlaw, Word, Acrobat) and back-office tools (timekeeping, accounting) as outside the rule, and brings in generative AI, LLMs, NLP, ML, and neural-network tools used to draft submitted text. It also addresses AI as evidence under a separate procedure.
Practitioner workflow
The order places the disclosure in the title or caption, in a table preceding the body text, or in a Notice filed contemporaneously with the document. Section VI also directs the parties to meet and confer on generative-AI issues and report them in their joint case management statements, and the “AI and Confidentiality” paragraph expects records, such as prompt logs, sufficient to show compliance if the Court asks. Firms also need a workflow that captures which sections of a brief were AI-drafted (e.g., AI-tool prompt logs tied to document sections) since the recordkeeping obligation is enforceable on Court request.
Primary source
Standing order: https://www.cand.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/standing-orders/PHK-Civil-Standing-Order_2025.7.16.pdf