AI ETHICS PART II: AI Ethics and the Model Rules of Professional Conduct
A. Helpful Resources to Guide AI Use
Lawyers who adopt AI tools remain bound by the same professional responsibility obligations that have always governed the practice of law and the attorney-client relationship. The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provide the authoritative framework, and bar opinions and standing judicial orders help defenders apply that framework to the practice of law. But the Model Rules were drafted long before generative AI emerged as a practical tool for legal work. No rule mentions artificial intelligence by name. Defenders must therefore interpret existing obligations — competence, confidentiality, and candor, in particular — in light of technological capabilities the drafters never anticipated. This interpretive challenge is complicated by AI’s more problematic characteristics. Its capacity to generate plausible but fabricated information, its reliance on third-party service and monitoring that may compromise confidentiality, and its tendency to affirm the biases of its creators and its users pose ethical challenges for defenders. The sections that follow identify duties of competence, confidentiality, and candor as the fundamental obligations for defenders but acknowledge other obligations that may be found in other Model Rules and are impacted by AI use. The sections examine how each core professional obligation applies when defenders incorporate AI into their practice.
First, however, defenders may find these resources helpful for compilation of existing judicial orders and/or local rules and bar opinions regarding the use of AI in the profession:
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Parity in Practice: The Defender’s Duty to Ethically Use AI
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