Ethics in Brief: New AI Lawyer Statutes and Rules On the Way
By David C. Carr
Not long ago, a high official with the State Bar of California told a room full of interested ethics lawyers that lawyers who get in trouble with Artificial Intelligence (AI) “should know better by now.”
Evidence from numerous recent stories in the legal press, as well as the Charlotin database, supports the idea that many lawyers still don’t know better.
Stepping into the shadow between the idea and the reality, California State Senator Tom Umberg and his cohort in the reform Legislature unanimously passed Senate Bill574[1] on August 31, 2026, and sent it to Governor Newsom, who signed it on September 30, 2026.
SB 574 imposes five new significant duties on lawyers and a new duty on arbitrators. It also adds a new section unrelated to AI, amending the statute that created a program for voluntary certification of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) by the State Bar.
New Duties for Lawyers
First, new Business and Professions Code section 6068.1 is added to the State Bar Act. New 6068.1(a)(2) specifically prohibits a lawyer from delegating the practice of law to generative artificial intelligence.
Second, 6068.1(a)(3)(A) prohibits a lawyer from entering “confidential, personal identifying, and other nonpublic information into a generative artificial intelligence system” [2]where those inputs are not restricted to the attorney and persons authorized by the attorney under obligations to protect the confidentiality of the information. “Generative artificial intelligence” system is defined in 6068.1(b)(1) as an AI “system that can generate derived synthetic content, including text, images, video, and audio that emulates the structure and characteristics of the system’s training data.”
Third, 6068.1(a)(3)(B) makes it the duty of a lawyer to “take reasonable steps to…(i) [v]erify the accuracy of generative artificial intelligence outputs, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of all case and statutory citations and (ii) correct any erroneous or hallucinated output in any material used by the attorney.
Fourth, 6068.1(c) requires a lawyer to disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence to the court for all documents submitted to the court. It also states that a lawyer should consider whether to disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence if it is used to create content provided to the public.
Section 6068.1 states rules that are subject to State Bar discipline. It creates clearer charging paths in disciplinary proceedings. So far, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel (OCTC) has mostly charged AI hallucinations as violations of Rule 1.1(a), the competence rule; Rule 1.3, the diligence rule; or dishonesty under Business and Professions Code section 6106. Given OCTC’s general practice of overcharging, a 6068.1 charge will likely just be thrown into the mix, rather than charged alone.
The fifth change of specific interest to lawyers does not concern discipline but civil sanctions. This addition to Code of Civil Procedure 128.7, California’s state equivalent of Rule 11, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure:
(2) (A) A brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court shall not contain any citations that an attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally verified, including any citation provided by generative artificial intelligence.
Civil sanctions can of course provide a launching pad for professional discipline, as they have in every discipline case so far involving AI. Sanctions of $1,000 or more must be reported to the State Bar under Business and Professions Code section 6068(o)(3).
New Duty for Arbitrators
SB 574 also addresses arbitrators’ use of AI by adding to the Civil Code. New section 1282.1(b)(1) provides that an “arbitrator shall not delegate any part of their decision-making process to any generative artificial intelligence tool” and (2) an “arbitrator shall not rely on information generated by generative artificial intelligence outside the record without making appropriate disclosures to the parties beforehand and, as far as practical, allowing the parties to comment on its use.
Voluntary Certification of ADR Providers
The final piece of SB 574 has nothing to do with AI. It amends Business and Professions Code section 6173.1, a statute passed just last year creating a voluntary program for certification of ADR providers. While outside the ambit of this “Ethics In Brief,” this would be a worthy topic of an article exploring the ethics and regulation of ADR.
Conclusion
Yes, lawyers should know better by now that AI, and especially AI hallucinations, can get them into trouble with the State Bar. But we could say that same about every other Rule of Professional Conduct and statute in the State Bar Act. We have had them for almost 100 years, and while the vast majority of lawyers are ethical and scrupulous, a small number will always be unable to follow the rules. We seem to be seeing fewer cases of AI hallucination in California so maybe we making progress.
[1] https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB574/id/3458133
