The Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence Tools & Resources received a President’s Award of Merit at the Annual Florida Bar Convention in Orlando last week for dedicating countless hours to studying and providing recommendations to the Bar Board of Governors concerning the implementation and use of AI for legal professionals and members of the public.
“The committee focused on identifying AI tools and examining how best to educate and provide resources as legal professionals explore and utilize AI, while upholding their duties as officers of the court,” President Scott Westheimer said. “They have helped Florida be a national leader in examining this rapidly changing landscape and helping our lawyers navigate these complicated issues.”
In December, the AI committee requested a formal ethics opinion to address everything from whether a lawyer should obtain a client’s informed consent, to AI’s impact on fees, advertising, duty to competence, and ethical responsibilities to main confidentiality and supervise non-lawyers.
The same month, the AI committee proposed new comments to several Bar rules that the Board of Governors quickly approved.
For example, a proposed amendment to Bar Rule 4-1.6 (Confidentiality of Information) would add a warning to a portion of the commentary subtitled, “Acting Competently to Preserve Client Confidentiality.” The proposed sentence would state, “For example, a lawyer should be aware that generative artificial intelligence may create risks to the lawyer’s duty to confidentiality.”
In January, the Board of Governors unanimously approved Advisory Opinion 24-1, after the Board Review Committee on Professional Ethics posted a draft for public comment.
Among other things, the opinion recommends that a lawyer obtain the “affected client’s informed consent prior to utilizing a third-party generative AI program if the utilization would involve the disclosure of any confidential information.”
A section of the opinion subtitled, “Oversight of Generative AI,” begins with a warning — “Lawyers who rely on generative AI for research, drafting, communication, and client intake risk many of the same perils as those who have relied on inexperienced or overconfident nonlawyer assistants.”
It concludes: “In sum, a lawyer may ethically utilize generative AI but only to the extent that the lawyer can reasonably guarantee compliance with the lawyer’s ethical obligations.”
Those obligations, according to the conclusion, include “the duties to confidentiality, avoidance of frivolous claims and contentions, candor to the tribunal, truthfulness in statements to others, avoidance of clearly excessive fees and costs, and compliance with restrictions on advertising for legal services.”
The committee was co-chaired by Gordon Glover and Duffy Myrtetus. Other members included:
- Carlos Baradat
- Judge Hunter Carroll
- Gustavo Ceballos
- Andrew Fay
- Bill Hamilton
- Kevin Johnson
- Karl Klein
- Liz McCausland
- Kristin Norse
- Michael Orr
- Hardy L. Roberts III
- Alice Sum
- Renée Thompson