Before approving an AI workflow, identify the professional rules that govern the lawyer and matter. A national model-rule opinion, a state bar advisory opinion, a city bar opinion and a court order have different roles. This guide compares selected primary sources checked on 9 September 2026. It is not a complete 50-state register or a finding that a particular product satisfies professional duties.
Why are state bars addressing generative AI?
Legal work involves confidential information, authorities that must support their propositions and decisions for which a lawyer remains accountable. AI introduces new ways for those duties to be missed: a persuasive summary can overstate a source, a shared workspace can expose a client file, or an unreviewed suggestion can reach a filing. An evaluation should therefore describe the task and its controls, rather than ask whether AI is allowed in the abstract.
What does ABA Formal Opinion 512 address?
ABA Formal Opinion 512, issued on 29 July 2024, addresses generative AI through competence, confidentiality, communication, candor, supervision and reasonable fees. It interprets Model Rules; it does not create a nationwide software approval scheme. Use the opinion to identify questions, then check the rules adopted where you practise.
Selected bar guidance and its status
| Authority | Document | Practical distinction |
|---|---|---|
| California State Bar | Practical guidance, revised May 2026 | A living guidance document; rule-change proposals have their own approval process. |
| Florida Bar | Opinion 24-1, 19 January 2024 | The opinion expressly identifies itself as advisory and nonbinding. |
| New York City Bar | Formal Opinion 2024-5, 7 August 2024 | A city bar ethics opinion based on New York rules, distinct from the state bar’s task-force report. |
California: the May 2026 update
The State Bar’s official resource page records approval of updated practical guidance on 14 May 2026, including developments involving agentic AI. It links to the current text. Review that version when revisiting an existing policy; a saved 2023 summary may miss later changes. Separately track any proposed professional-conduct amendments through their adoption process.
Florida: Opinion 24-1
Florida’s opinion addresses confidentiality, competence, billing and advertising. It calls for scrutiny of retention, sharing and self-learning policies and explains that lawyers remain responsible for work product. It also addresses AI chatbots used for client or prospective-client communications. An internal drafting pilot and a public intake chatbot therefore require different questions.
New York: distinguish the issuing organisations
The New York City Bar’s Formal Opinion 2024-5 provides general guidance on generative AI through New York professional duties. Do not relabel it as a New York State Bar opinion. The State Bar’s AI task-force report is a separate publication with a different function. Record the exact document relied on instead of citing “New York AI guidance” without a title.
How to extend the register to another jurisdiction
For a state outside this selected comparison, check its official professional-conduct rules and ethics resources. Add the issuing body, document number, publication date, current version and relevant passages to the register. Keep court-specific AI requirements in a separate row. Silence in this article is not evidence that a jurisdiction has no guidance or that a workflow is permitted.
Turn the guidance into a review record
| Question | Evidence to retain | Who resolves it? |
|---|---|---|
| What information leaves the firm? | Data flow, retention terms, subprocessor list and access settings | Responsible lawyer and privacy/security owner |
| Does the answer match its source? | Source passage, authority status and unresolved gaps | Research reviewer |
| What reaches the client or court? | Approved draft, required disclosure and review sign-off | Lawyer responsible for the matter |
| What was actually billed? | Work performed, time records and agreed fee basis | Billing partner or supervisor |
A worked supervision example
Consider a fictional associate preparing a motion from an AI research memo. The reviewer finds a real opinion, but the quoted passage reports a party’s argument rather than the court’s reasoning. The correction is to reopen the source, identify what the court decided, amend the proposition and check the final draft. The existence of the citation alone would not catch the mistake.
Record the error type and add that example to the firm’s next training exercise. Use our research verification checklist and malpractice-risk workflow to connect the policy to review steps. These are editorial implementation suggestions, not a claim that every bar mandates this exact form.
Where Judicio fits
Legal Research provides source-linked working answers; Document Review helps surface issues for human review; and File Library keeps matter documents together. Confirm the current contractual and technical safeguards through the security information and your procurement process. A source-linked output still needs substantive verification, and a product feature does not establish ethics compliance.
Maintain a dated source register
Recheck the relevant authority before changing a workflow or using it on a materially different matter. Record what changed, which policy decision it affects and who approved the response. Our US vendor questionnaire provides a practical starting point for requesting evidence. Seek jurisdiction-specific ethics advice where the applicable rule or consent decision is uncertain.