The New York State Bar Association has adopted guidelines for lawyers to use artificial intelligence – and they’re quite comprehensive!

As announced by the New York State Bar Association on Monday, the report from the association’s Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, which was approved by its governing body, the House of Delegates, on Saturday, advises lawyers to disclose to clients when AI tools are employed in their cases. Under the Rules of Professional Conduct, attorneys also have an obligation to make sure that paralegals and other employees are handling AI properly, the report states.

The task force determined that New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct provide helpful guidance governing attorneys’ use of AI but said that more education was needed to make sure that attorneys and judges are handling the technology properly. The report also says that legislation may become necessary to govern its use.

The report also recommends that the association form a standing committee to address evolving AI issues including ethical concerns that derive from the technology’s tendency to hallucinate. The most serious hallucinations have resulted in citations and quotes from non-existent cases being included in briefs.

The New York State Bar Association guidelines (available here) are a whopping 92(!) pages, covering everything from the evolution of AI and generative AI (all the way back from the 1940s!) to benefits and risks of AI and generative AI use to impacts on the legal profession to legislative overview and recommendations to the guidelines themselves, which span a mere four pages. That’s followed by a conclusion and 30 pages of appendices and end notes. That’s quite comprehensive!

The NYSBA guidelines follow AI guidelines for California last December and a Generative AI ethics opinion from Florida in January. Three down, a lot to go!

So, what do you think? Are these AI guidelines going to make a difference? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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