In its first guidance on use of artificial intelligence, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility has released a formal opinion urging lawyers to be mindful of several model rules, including ones related to competency, communications, confidentiality and fees.
July 29, 2024 Legal Ethics
ABA issues first guidance on a lawyer’s use of AI tools
“This opinion identifies some ethical issues involving the use of GAI (generative artificial intelligence) tools and offers general guidance for lawyers attempting to navigate this emerging landscape,” Formal Opinion 512 said. It added that the ABA committee and state and local bar association ethics committees will likely continue to “offer updated guidance on professional conduct issues relevant to specific GAI tools as they develop.”
The 15-page opinion, issued on July 29, specifically outlined that under the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct lawyers should consider model rules that include:
- Competence (1.1). This obligates lawyers to provide competent representation to clients and requires they exercise the “legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.”
- Confidentiality of Information (1.6). Under this model rule, a lawyer using GAI must be cognizant of the duty to keep confidential all information relating to the representation of a client, regardless of its source, unless the client gives informed consent.
- Communications (1.4). This addresses lawyers’ duty to communicate with their clients and builds on lawyers’ legal obligations as fiduciaries, which include “the duty of an attorney to advise the client promptly whenever he has any information to give which it is important the client should receive.”
- Fees (1.5). If a lawyer uses a GAI tool to draft a pleading and expends 15 minutes to input the relevant information into the program, the lawyer may charge for that time as well as for the time necessary to review the resulting draft for accuracy and completeness. But the lawyer should not charge a client to learn about the tool.