Filed under your bar number: the attorney who did not file
Sanctions in 2025 and 2026 landed on named individual attorneys for content in filings, including content those attorneys say they did not review. The uncomfortable part is not the sanctions. It is that the profession's standard operating practice makes the attorney's account and the attorney's judgement two different things.
Who actually filed under your bar number?
Frequently a paralegal, legitimately, using shared e-filing credentials. The filing carries an attorney's certification with personal professional consequences, and the system records a login. Delegation is universal, necessary and almost never recorded as delegation.
- E-filing systems issue one credential per attorney because rules contemplate personal responsibility. Practice requires delegation. With no delegation primitive, firms implement it by sharing the credential.
- Credential sharing collapses the distinction between the responsible attorney and the operator, which is precisely the distinction sanctions turn on.
- A delegation pattern preserves the workflow: the operator submits, but only a document the attorney signed.
Part of Courts and fiduciary identity
The practice everyone knows and nobody documents
Ask a managing partner whether attorneys share their e-filing credentials and you will get a careful answer about firm policy. Ask a docketing supervisor and you will get an operational one, which is that filings go out on deadline and the attorney is in a deposition.
The second answer is the accurate one, and it is not a scandal. It is the rational response to a system that issued one credential per attorney for an activity performed by support staff at volume under time pressure.
The problem is that the system's design assumption — the person with the credential is the person exercising judgement — has quietly become false, and the consequences attach to individuals.
Why the usual framing is wrong
Ethics guidance frames this as supervision. Model Rules 5.1 and 5.3 require lawyers to make reasonable efforts to ensure that subordinate lawyers and non-lawyer assistants conform to professional obligations. The implied remedy is better supervision.
Better supervision does not address the mechanism. A supervising attorney who has genuinely reviewed a document still cannot demonstrate it, because the record shows the same thing either way: a submission from their account. Supervision improves the probability that review happened. It does nothing for the evidence.
When a profession's standard practice contradicts its formal model, the answer is rarely more exhortation. It is usually a missing primitive.
The missing primitive
What practice needs and no e-filing system provides is delegation: the ability for a responsible attorney to authorise a specific operator to submit a specific document, without handing over the ability to submit anything at all.
That is a well-understood construct everywhere except here.
The Filing Delegation Pattern
- The document reaches final form. The attorney reviews it — which they are required to do and which most do.
- The attorney signs a canonical statement carrying the document hash, the matter, the court and the filing type. This takes a device gesture, from wherever they are.
- The operator submits, presenting the attorney's signed statement alongside the document.
- The e-filing system, or the firm's own record, binds the submission to the attorney's signature over that exact document.
- Any later version differs by hash and is visibly not what the attorney signed.
The operator still submits. The deadline is still met by someone whose job is meeting deadlines. What changes is that the operator cannot submit an unsigned document, and the attorney's attestation covers the bytes rather than the account.
What this does for the individual attorney
This is the argument that moves partners, and it is worth being direct about it. Sanctions in this class attach to people, not to firms. Malpractice premiums follow. Disciplinary records are permanent and public.
An attorney who signed a document has a verifiable record of what they signed. An attorney who did not sign a document filed under their credentials has the absence of a signature, which is evidence in their favour and which today does not exist.
The firm-level benefit
Credential sharing is a standing finding in every law firm security assessment and every client security questionnaire. It is usually answered with a policy statement that everyone involved knows to be aspirational.
A delegation pattern lets a firm answer the question honestly: credentials are not shared, delegated submission is a defined and recorded process, and the responsible attorney's signature covers the filed document. That answer holds up under client scrutiny in a way the current one does not.
The constraint to be honest about
Court rules generally contemplate that the credential holder submits. A firm implementing this pattern is improving its internal control and its evidence; it is not thereby permitted to do anything the rules currently prohibit.
The realistic sequence is that firms adopt it internally as a risk control, the evidence proves useful in a sanctions context, and court rules follow. That is how e-signature practice evolved in every other jurisdiction it has touched.
Why this matters more now
A filing certification is a statement that the attorney has read the document and that its contentions are warranted. As generative tools draft more of the material beneath that certification, the gap between who reviewed and who filed becomes the question a court asks first.
| Pattern | Attorney reviewed? | Record |
|---|---|---|
| Attorney drafts and files | Yes | A login |
| Attorney approves, paralegal files | Yes | The same login |
| Paralegal drafts and files under standing instruction | Sometimes not | The same login |
Objections and honest limits
“Delegation to staff is proper and long-established.” It is, and nothing here suggests otherwise. The argument is that a legitimate delegation should be visible as one, not indistinguishable from personal filing.
“Courts have not required this.” They have started asking who reviewed filings containing fabricated citations, and a system that cannot answer leaves the attorney explaining rather than producing.
Recording the delegation
- Separate approval from submission. Two acts, two records.
- Have the attorney sign the document digest. Before it is filed, not after.
- Let staff file under their own identity. With the attorney's signed approval attached.
- Keep both with the matter. So a later question is a retrieval.
Terms used here
- Filing certification
- The attorney's statement that a filed document has been reviewed and its contentions are warranted.
- Standing instruction
- A general authorisation for staff to file routine documents, efficient and invisible in the record.
- E-filing credentials
- The login used to submit to the court, frequently shared within a practice group.
Frequently asked questions
Does this mean our firm is currently violating rules? That is a question for your ethics counsel and depends on your jurisdiction's rules and your actual practice. This article addresses the evidentiary consequence, not the compliance question.
How does the attorney sign from a deposition? A device gesture on a phone, on a signing request that renders the document. It takes seconds and does not require a desktop.
What about emergency filings at 11:58pm? Define an exception path with supervisor authorisation and a recorded exception. A control that causes a missed deadline will not survive its first month.
Does this work for state e-filing systems with different credentials? The attorney signature is independent of the filing system. It works alongside any of them, because it is a firm-side record of what the attorney approved.
Is delegating filing improper? No. It is proper and long-established. The issue is that a legitimate delegation is indistinguishable from the attorney filing personally.
Why does this matter more now? Because courts have begun asking who reviewed filings containing fabricated citations, and the record cannot answer.
What is the minimal change? The attorney signs the document digest before filing; staff submit under their own identity with that approval attached.
Where this fits in Manav
Manav binds the authorising person to the exact instruction, filing or engagement, and produces a receipt a court, a counterparty or a regulator can verify without access to the firm's systems.
Sources and further reading
- ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct 5.1 and 5.3 — responsibilities regarding subordinate lawyers and non-lawyer assistance.
- U.S. Department of Justice — press releases
- Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — Rule 11
- Law firm information security assessment practice on credential sharing findings.