Claude responded: Short answer: no.
Searched the web, read a page
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Searched the web, read a page

Short answer: no. In the one Utah state appellate decision squarely on these facts, the lawyer told the court that an unlicensed law clerk used ChatGPT without his knowledge. He was sanctioned anyway. The explanation, plus his prompt candor, affected how severe the sanctions were and whether he was found to have violated Rule 3.3. It did not excuse him from sanctions.

The controlling case

Garner v. Kadince, Inc., 2025 UT App 80, 571 P.3d 812 (per curiam). Filed May 22, 2025. I’m giving Utah’s paragraph pinpoints. I couldn’t verify P.3d page pins. 
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The facts match your hypothetical. At ¶5: “Petitioner’s counsel were not aware that the law clerk was using ChatGPT in the preparation of their firm’s legal work, and they acknowledged that the use of AI had not been previously addressed at their firm, either formally or informally.” 
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The duty belongs to the attorney and can’t be passed to staff. At ¶8: “However, we emphasize that every attorney has an ongoing duty to review and ensure the accuracy of their court filings.” 
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The signature is what makes the lawyer liable. At ¶10: “And the signature of Mr. Bednar on the Petition served to ‘certif[y] that to the best of [his] knowledge formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances,’ the ‘legal contentions are warranted by existing law.’” 
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Owning the mistake did not avoid sanctions. At ¶12: “Although the court appreciates Petitioner’s counsel’s acceptance of responsibility for their conduct, filing pleadings or other legal documents without taking the necessary care in their preparation is an abuse of the judicial system and subject to sanctions.” 
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Where the explanation did help. Candor reduced the sanctions. At ¶13: “Petitioner’s counsel’s conduct has not been similarly egregious, and they have accepted responsibility for their misrepresentations to this court.” 
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The lack of knowledge also kept the conduct below the Rule 3.3 threshold. At ¶10 n.4: “Although Petitioner’s counsel made ‘a false statement of . . . law to a tribunal,’ we find that their conduct fell short of the level of intent required by the rule.” 
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What the sanctions were. At ¶16, Bednar was ordered to pay Respondents’ attorney fees for responding to the Petition and attending the OSC hearing, counsel were ordered to refund all fees charged for the Petition, and Bednar was ordered to donate $1,000 to “and Justice for all.” The refund order applied to both lawyers. That includes Durbano, who was not involved with the drafting of the Petition. 
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What I couldn’t support

No case says the clerk explanation is “irrelevant.” Garner never addresses it as a defense and rejects it. It treats the explanation as context and treats the signing lawyer’s verification duty as decisive. Calling that a “non-delegable duty” is a fair reading of ¶¶8 and 10, not language the court used.

Rule 5.3 is not in the opinion. Some secondary trackers say Garner rests on Utah RPC 5.3, the rule on supervising nonlawyer assistants. That is wrong. The opinion relies on Utah R. App. P. 40 and discusses RPC 3.3 only in footnote 4. Don’t cite Garner for a 5.3 holding.

Prisbrey doesn’t help. Prisbrey v. Prisbrey, 2026 UT App 39, flagged citations in appellate briefing that appear to be made out of whole cloth. It involves no clerk-did-it explanation and no sanctions analysis I could find, so it doesn’t support your point. 
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No Utah Supreme Court case found. I found no Utah Supreme Court or trial-court decision from 2023 to today on this question. Search engines won’t reliably surface unpublished Utah orders, so run a Westlaw or Lexis citator check on Garner before relying on this as complete.

Trial-level filings fall under Rule 11. Garner was an appellate proceeding under App. R. 40. The court called Rule 40 the counterpart to rule 11 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure, so expect the same reasoning in district court, but no published case has applied it there yet. 
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I’m not a lawyer, so treat this as research, not advice.

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