Technology’s Effect on Advocacy
clarifying attorneys’ duties of competence, confidentiality, communication, supervision, and candor to the court. A prospective client may arrive convinced that California law “clearly” establishes a particular proposition because an AI platform cited three cases supporting it. The problem? The cases do not exist, or may exist in a completely different jurisdiction and applied incorrectly. The danger is not simply misinformation, it is the presentation of misinformation. Generative AI typically will not preface a hallucinated answer with: “I am about to make something up.” The results sound authoritative, by design, which can be particularly persuasive to a nonlawyer. A client sees headings, citations, legal terminology, and confident analysis. It looks like a legal memorandum. It is therefore tempting to treat AI as an unusually efficient research lawyer – but it’s not. At least not without supervision of one.
Settlement Dangers
For plaintiffs’ attorneys, hallucinated case law may not even be the most common problem. Unrealistic valuation may be worse. Every consumer attorney has encountered some version of the client who has already decided what the case is worth. AI can supercharge that phenomenon. Ask an AI system to identify verdicts involving discrimination, catastrophic injuries, sexual harassment, retaliation, or bad-faith insurance conduct, and it can quickly produce examples involving enormous numbers. What it cannot necessarily do is explain why this case is not that case. A $10 million verdict involving years of harassment, extraordinary economic loss, egregious corporate misconduct, and devastating psychological injury does not establish the value of a
a substitute for professional judgment. In November 2023, the State Bar of California’s Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct (COPRAC) issued its Practical Guidance for the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law to assist attorneys in navigating their ethical obligations when using generative AI. As AI technology continued to evolve, COPRAC revisited and revised the guidance, and the State Bar approved an updated version on May 14, 2026. The 2026 guidance replaces the 2023 version and expands its discussion to address technological developments, including the emergence of agentic AI, while further
39
Consumer Attorneys of California
FORUM September/October 2026
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs