I wouldn’t be surprised if prison is on the table. Intentionally filing bullshit to the court can get you some penalties indeed.

He swore under oath that everything in the affidavit is correct. So he lied under oath, means he committed perjury. Where I live, perjury has a 3 year jail sentence. However it is very rarely enforced.

The standard for perjury is (generally) a standard of belief, which is much stronger than factuality. Ignorance of what ChatGPT is, even shocking ignorance, may not clear that bar.

In other words: I would be very surprised if perjury was on the table here. This falls under the kind of basic competence and client obligation that the Bar exists to address.

Without malicious intent it’s highly unlikely he will get a perjury charge but he may be made an example of.

I don’t think disbarment is out of the question (and that would indeed send a very strong message), but I disagree that this comes anywhere close to a serious risk of prison for this lawyer.

Does that mean you've seen something similar lead to disbarment and prison time? What was it?

I would personally be surprised because I haven't seen that.

Not surprised as in "technically there's the possibility" not not surprised as in "I done seen it happen".

Now if the shit had slipped through, and the result of the misconduct had been a client going to jail or something, things might be different.