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Motion Practice

PLA 2201Activity 7

Why it Matters

Between the complaint that opens a civil case and the trial that may never come, the judge rules on motions. Each asks for a specific order: dismissing a claim the law does not recognize, compelling discovery, keeping evidence from the jury, or entering judgment without a trial. A motion for summary judgment can end a whole lawsuit on the written record, before any witness takes the stand. Florida has applied the federal standard to that motion since May 1, 2021, after its Supreme Court concluded that the state’s old approach had unduly hindered summary judgment. So any motion, whoever or whatever drafted it, faces two questions before it is filed: are its authorities real, and does its argument meet the rule’s standard?

Current Context

On May 28, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court amended Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.515(d)(2) (opens in a new tab) on its own motion, effective June 15, 2026. Chapter 2 on The Florida Bar’s rules page (opens in a new tab) now prints what every signer, a lawyer or a party without one, represents: “the legal authorities identified exist and are accurately cited.” After notice and a chance to be heard, a court may sanction a filing inconsistent with that representation, with penalties from a reprimand to striking the document, dismissal, or fees. The Court adopted the amendment to replace varied circuit court orders on AI disclosure and certification with one statewide rule, and it took comments until August 11, 2026, since it had skipped prior publication. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b) (opens in a new tab) reaches the same conduct through a general certification, while in Florida, checking every authority in an AI draft is now part of what a signature says.

Key Concepts

Motion Practice

The formal process of asking a court for a ruling or order, at any stage from the first pretrial weeks through the motions that follow a trial. Federal Rule 7(b) and Florida Rule 1.100(b) set the baseline: a motion must be in writing unless made at a hearing or trial, state its grounds with particularity, and state the relief sought. Many motions also have a rule of their own, like Federal Rule 56 or Florida Rule 1.510 for summary judgment, that adds timing and content requirements.

Memorandum of Law

The written legal argument attached to or contained within a motion, also called a brief. It states the rule or standard that governs, applies that standard to the facts, and cites the statutes and cases that support the request. A motion without sound legal authority behind it rarely succeeds.

Dispositive vs. Non-Dispositive Motion

A dispositive motion can end all or part of a case, such as a motion to dismiss or a motion for summary judgment. A non-dispositive motion resolves a smaller question along the way, such as a motion to compel discovery or a motion for a protective order. Florida’s Rule 1.202 requires conferral with the opposing party before a non-dispositive motion, and under Federal Rule 72 a magistrate judge may decide one but only recommends a ruling on a dispositive motion.

Motion to Dismiss (Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6); Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.140(b)(6))

A challenge to the legal sufficiency of the complaint, arguing that even if everything the plaintiff alleges is true, it still does not state a claim the law will recognize. In federal court the ground is failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6); in Florida state court it is failure to state a cause of action under Rule 1.140(b)(6). It tests the pleading, not the evidence.

Motion for Summary Judgment (Fed. R. Civ. P. 56; Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.510)

A request for judgment before trial on the ground that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the moving party (the “movant”) is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Because it can resolve a case without a trial, it is one of the most consequential motions in civil litigation. Federal Rule 56 and Florida Rule 1.510 now apply the same standard, though their timing rules differ.

Genuine Dispute of Material Fact

The test that decides a summary judgment motion. A fact is “material” if it might affect the outcome under the governing law, and a dispute is “genuine” if the evidence would let a reasonable jury return a verdict for the nonmoving party. If one exists, summary judgment is denied on that claim or defense and the dispute is left for trial; if none exists, the judge decides whether the law entitles the movant to judgment.

The Summary Judgment Trilogy

Three 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decisions: Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp. Together they shaped the modern federal summary judgment standard, including how the burden shifts between the parties. Florida adopted that standard in Rule 1.510 effective May 1, 2021, replacing an approach that made the movant disprove the other side’s theory of the case and let the slightest doubt defeat the motion.

Fabricated Authority (AI Hallucination)

When an AI model generates a citation, quotation, or rule that looks legitimate but does not exist or does not say what the model claims. Courts have sanctioned lawyers for filing briefs containing AI-invented cases, which is why every authority an AI produces has to be checked against the primary source before anyone relies on it.

Resources

What to Do

The motion you draft here gets an AI’s first pass and then three tests before it could reach a judge. Every rule and case it cites has to exist and say what the draft claims. Its structure and argument have to hold up beside motions that practicing attorneys filed in real cases, and it has to survive the strongest response an opponent could write. By the end you can point to what separates a filing a court takes seriously from one that only looks like it.

Part 1: Draft a Motion With AI

Start with the Motion Drafter prompt. It asks first which court you are filing in, federal or Florida state, and which motion you want to draft. Choose a dispositive motion, one that can end the case: a motion for summary judgment or a motion to dismiss. Have the AI produce an outline first, then a full draft built on a short, made-up fact pattern. As the draft takes shape, notice its parts. The caption is the heading at the top that names the court and the parties and states the case number. Then come the statement of facts and the argument section, followed by the prayer for relief, the specific ruling you are asking the judge to enter. Last is the certificate of service, the statement confirming you sent the motion to every other party. In Florida that certificate is the filer’s proof of service under Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.516(f), while Federal Rule 5(d)(1)(B) excuses it when the court’s electronic-filing system makes the service. Save the complete draft; you will be testing it in the next two Parts. If you want to see the jurisdictional contrast up front, run the Jurisdiction Comparator prompt to lay Federal Rule 56 beside Florida Rule 1.510 (or Rule 12(b)(6) beside Rule 1.140(b)(6)) before you draft.

Part 2: Verify the Law the AI Cited

An AI draft can read like a polished brief and still cite a rule that does not exist or a case that does not say what the draft claims. Run the Authority Verifier prompt on your saved draft, then check its output yourself against the primary sources. For every federal rule, open Cornell LII and read the actual text of Rule 56 or Rule 12. For every Florida rule, open the Florida Bar’s rules page and read Rule 1.510 or Rule 1.140. For every case, search Google Scholar with the “Case law” filter and confirm that the case exists, the citation is right, and the holding matches what the draft says it does. Keep a short log of what held up and what did not, including anything the AI appears to have invented. Lawyers have been sanctioned for filing briefs that skipped this step.

Part 3: Compare With Real Motions Attorneys Filed

Now measure the AI’s work against the professional standard. If you drafted a federal motion, go to PACER and pull at least two real examples of the same motion type; if you drafted a Florida motion, use the Volusia County Clerk case search. (Federal attorneys file through CM/ECF and Florida attorneys file through the statewide Florida Courts E-Filing Portal; PACER and the Clerk’s site are where the public reads what they filed.) Put the AI draft next to the attorney filings and compare them on structure, tone, formatting, and how each one supports its argument with rules and case law. Then run the Counterargument Generator prompt to see how a competent opponent would attack your motion, which will show you where the AI draft is weak. The prompt is written for summary judgment. If you drafted a motion to dismiss, swap in that motion’s test before you run it: whether the complaint states a claim, taking its allegations as true.

Part 4: Write Your Forum Post

Write a forum post of 400 to 600 words reflecting on what you found. Explain what the AI did well and where its draft fell short of the attorney filings. Address these questions directly: Does the AI’s motion read like a document a lawyer would actually file? What did it leave out or get wrong? How did its use of facts and legal authority differ from the real motions, and did the Authority Verifier surface anything that did not exist? Ground every point in specific examples from your draft, your verification log, and the filings you pulled.

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

Suggested AI Prompts

Use these prompts as a starting point, then adjust them to fit your goal. Strong prompting develops through trial, revision, and testing. It’s a foundational skill that grows into more advanced AI work such as context engineering and agent-based workflows.

Motion Drafter

You are helping me draft a civil litigation motion for a college Civil Litigation course. Before you write anything, ask me two questions: (1) whether the motion will be filed in federal court or Florida state court, and (2) which motion I want to draft, such as a motion for summary judgment or a motion to dismiss. After I answer, produce a detailed outline with these sections, adding one sentence on the function of each: caption, introduction and procedural background, statement of facts, argument (citing the governing rule and any supporting cases accurately), prayer for relief, and certificate of service. Identify the exact governing rule for the court I chose: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 or 12, or the Florida counterpart 1.510 or 1.140. Then ask whether I want a full draft. If I say yes, invent a short, simple fact pattern and write the complete motion in proper format.

Role assignment frames the model as your drafting partner, and Socratic elicitation makes it ask which court and which motion before it writes. The draft then rests on your answers instead of a guess about the jurisdiction, which is how a model ends up applying the wrong rule.

Authority Verifier

Here is a motion draft: [paste your draft]. Do not rewrite it. Instead, produce a table with one row for every legal authority the draft cites, meaning each rule, statute, and case. For each row, give the citation exactly as it appears, state in one sentence what the draft uses it for, and add a confidence column flagging any authority you are not certain exists or are not certain says what the draft claims. List separately anything you suspect you may have generated without a reliable source. Do not reassure me that the citations are probably fine; your job is to surface everything I need to check myself.

Source grounding here becomes a checklist: the model isolates every citation, and you verify each one against Cornell LII, the Florida Bar’s rules page, or Google Scholar. A model cannot reliably confirm its own authorities, so the prompt has it surface its doubts and leaves the verdict with you.

Counterargument Generator

You are opposing counsel responding to this motion: [paste your draft]. The court applies the federal summary judgment standard from Celotex, Anderson, and Matsushita, which Florida also follows under Rule 1.510: summary judgment is granted only when there is no genuine dispute of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Write the strongest response you can, identifying where the motion fails to show the absence of a genuine dispute, where its facts are thin, and where its legal argument overreaches. Be specific and adversarial rather than balanced.

Red-teaming asks the model to attack your motion instead of praising it, which tends to produce sharper analysis than a neutral review. Models lean toward telling you your work is good, and an opponent’s role pushes against that habit.

Jurisdiction Comparator

I am comparing how federal and Florida courts handle the same motion. Build a table comparing either Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 with Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.510, or Federal Rule 12(b)(6) with Florida Rule 1.140(b), whichever I specify. Use rows for the governing standard, what the moving party must show, key deadlines or timing, and any notable differences. For each cell, cite the specific rule provision so I can confirm it against the actual rule text. Point out where Florida’s rule tracks the federal rule and where it diverges.

A table is structured output: each row makes the model address the same point for both rules, where a paragraph would let it skip the hard ones. Citing a provision in every cell builds the check against the rule text into the prompt itself.

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