As artificial intelligence (“AI”) becomes more integrated into legal practice, lawyers must exercise care to use these tools responsibly and in full compliance with their ethical duties set forth in the rules of professional conduct. While AI has been available for years, Generative AI (“GenAI”), a relatively new tool, is rapidly transforming legal practice in ways that offer significant benefits but also raise new ethical and professional considerations. GenAI is a type of AI trained on data (text, images, data, music, computer code) that can generate new information, content, and insights. But if the GenAI lacks proper safeguards, it may “hallucinate,” meaning it can provide false information in response to prompts due to its design focus on pattern-based content generation. This article will focus on two critical risks for lawyers: (1) relying on GenAI-generated outputs without verification and (2) making unauthorized disclosures of client confidences when using GenAI tools.
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