Courts With AI Disclosure Orders: A Running Tracker

No official count exists. Court AI disclosure orders began as a reaction to a handful of briefs with invented citations in 2023, and Ropes & Gray’s AI court order tracker now lists 194 orders and rules requiring AI disclosure or verification as of October 2026, while a narrower Bloomberg Law analysis in April 2025 found 39 federal judges with AI standing orders. Courts disagree: some require a statement on whether AI was used, some a certificate that a human checked the work, and a few have decided against any rule; this tracker describes what courts have done, not what a given court requires of any reader.

How Many Court AI Disclosure Orders Exist?

No official count exists, so the best numbers come from private trackers. Ropes & Gray’s AI court order tracker, which covers standing orders, local rules and decisions, tagged 194 entries as requiring disclosure, verification or both when we checked on October 23, 2026. It tagged 492 as suggesting cautious use and only five as prohibiting AI use outright. The same database tagged 193 entries as imposing consequences on attorneys or law firms, which shows how much of the material is now sanctions decisions rather than rules written in advance.

Bloomberg Law ran a narrower count focused on federal judges’ standing orders. Its April 2025 analysis found 39 federal judges had issued AI standing orders since May 2023. Thirty-five came from district judges, three from bankruptcy judges and one from the Court of International Trade. The Northern District of California led with five judges, followed by the Central District of California and the Northern District of Illinois with four each. Bloomberg Law also noted that the most recent data suggested judges were shifting from issuing standing orders to sanctioning lawyers.

The numbers differ because the scope differs. One tracker counts every state and federal order, rule and opinion touching AI; the other counts only federal standing orders. Anyone citing a figure should say which one.

How Have Courts Approached AI Disclosure?

The first approach is the individual standing order, which applies only in one judge’s courtroom. The D.C. Bar’s Ethics Opinion 388 describes Judge Brantley Starr of the Northern District of Texas as one of the first, quoting his requirement that attorneys file a certificate attesting either that no portion of a filing was drafted by generative AI or that any AI-drafted language was checked for accuracy. Orders like his are the reason the databases are so large: each judge writes a slightly different rule, with different definitions of AI and different certification language.

The second approach is a court-wide local rule. The Northern District of Texas now has one. Local Civil Rule 7.2(f), in the court’s current local rules, says a brief prepared using generative AI must disclose that on its first page under the heading “Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence,” and that a brief without the disclosure certifies no part was prepared with generative AI. If the presiding judge directs, the filer must also identify which parts were AI-prepared. The rule’s definition of generative AI is broad, covering any tool that generates new content from a prompt by learning from a large set of examples.

The third approach is a decision not to require disclosure at all. The Fifth Circuit proposed an AI rule and then dropped it; the court’s notice said parties are already responsible for checking filings for truthfulness and accuracy and that “‘I used AI’ will not be an excuse for an otherwise sanctionable offense.” Texas’s ethics committee, in Opinion 705, dates that decision to June 10, 2024. The Illinois Supreme Court went further in its AI policy, effective January 1, 2025, which says AI use by lawyers and litigants “should not be discouraged” and that “disclosure of AI use should not be required in a pleading,” while holding everyone accountable for their final work product.

Why Is Disclosure Losing Ground to Verification?

The split reflects a real problem with disclosure rules. Generative AI now sits inside word processors, research platforms and email, so a rule asking whether AI was used at all can capture almost every filing. The more durable question, and the one the Fifth Circuit and Illinois focused on, is whether a lawyer checked what was filed. That is already a duty under existing rules. The ABA’s Formal Opinion 512 notes that some courts require disclosure and directs lawyers to the applicable court’s local rules, while grounding the core obligation in competence and candor rather than disclosure.

For litigation teams, the practical burden is tracking. A firm filing in many courts faces a patchwork in which the same brief might need a disclosure in one courtroom, a verification certificate in another and nothing at all in a third. That is why the public databases matter. Beyond Ropes & Gray and Bloomberg Law, the open-source AI Orders Explorer merges the Ropes & Gray tracker with Duke Law’s RAILS tracker and adds links to the underlying documents through CourtListener.

What Should You Watch Next?

Watch whether more federal districts follow the Northern District of Texas from individual orders to a single local rule, which would reduce the patchwork even if it adds a requirement. Watch the share of sanctions decisions in the trackers; Bloomberg Law saw judges moving from rules to sanctions in 2025, and the 193 attorney-consequence entries in the Ropes & Gray database suggest sanctions are now a large share of the material. And watch state supreme courts, which can set one policy for every trial court in a state, as Illinois did. We will update this tracker as new court-wide rules are adopted or withdrawn.

FAQ

Is there an official list of court AI disclosure orders?

No. The best counts come from private trackers such as Ropes & Gray’s, checked October 2026.

Which federal district has a court-wide AI rule?

The Northern District of Texas, under Local Civil Rule 7.2(f) in its current local rules.

Did the Fifth Circuit adopt an AI rule?

No. It proposed one and then dropped it, per the court’s notice.

Why do counts differ?

Scope. One tracker counts every state and federal order, rule and opinion on AI; another counts only federal standing orders.