Is AI allowed under the rules of professional conduct?
Yes, when it is supervised. The rules of professional conduct have always allowed lawyers to delegate work to nonlawyer assistants, provided a licensed attorney supervises the work and remains responsible for it. The American Bar Association applied that same framework to generative AI in Formal Opinion 512: lawyers may use these tools if they meet their duties of competence, confidentiality, and supervision. The line is not whether software helped; it is whether a lawyer reviewed, approved, and stands behind the work.
Which rules actually govern this?
- Competence. Model Rule 1.1 requires competent representation, and its comment extends competence to understanding the benefits and risks of relevant technology.1
- Supervision of nonlawyer assistance. Model Rule 5.3 makes lawyers responsible for the conduct of nonlawyer assistants, and bar guidance treats software assistance under the same framework.2
- Confidentiality. Model Rule 1.6 governs what client information may be shared with any tool and on what terms.3
- The 2024 guidance. ABA Formal Opinion 512 addresses generative AI directly: permitted, with duties of competence, confidentiality, communication, supervision, and reasonable fees.4
What does supervision mean for automation in practice?
It means the attorney reviews and approves the work before it acts in the world, exactly as with an associate’s or paralegal’s draft. The practical test for any tool: can anything reach a court, an adversary, or a client without a lawyer signing off? If the answer is yes, the tool is asking the lawyer to violate the supervision duty. If the approval gate is structural, the tool fits inside the framework the rules already built.
What about the invented citation problem?
Courts have sanctioned lawyers for filing briefs with citations that do not exist, which is a competence and candor failure, not a technology failure: the lawyer signed work nobody checked. The remedy is verification against the source before the draft reaches the signing attorney, and treating an unverified citation as worse than no citation at all.
How is Execute built for this?
Execute makes the supervision model architecture: every document passes through attorney approval before it is served, filed, or sent, the firm’s judgment stays where the rules put it, and what the system learns inside a firm never works for anyone else. The full security and confidentiality answers are on the Security page.
This page is general information about the rules, written by a practicing lawyer, but it is not legal advice and your jurisdiction’s rules and opinions control.
1. American Bar Association, Model Rule 1.1, competence, including comment 8 on technology: rule text.
2. American Bar Association, Model Rule 5.3, responsibilities regarding nonlawyer assistance: rule text.
3. American Bar Association, Model Rule 1.6, confidentiality of information: rule text.
4. American Bar Association, Formal Opinion 512 on generative artificial intelligence tools, July 2024: opinion PDF.
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