Checklist: Responsible AI Adoption

Understand What AI Can and Can't Do

• Use AI for appropriate tasks: verifying citation accuracy, creating case timelines, identifying missing or misstated legal authority, and summarizing depositions and transcripts. Timeline: 24 hours before • Priority: High

• Treat every AI-generated output as a draft, not a deliverable — the ABA Year 2 Report confirms that no generative AI tool has fully resolved the hallucination problem.
• Keep attorney direction at the center of any AI-assisted workflow; AI assists, it does not decide.

Choose the Right Tool

• Distinguish between consumer-grade AI and professional legal AI before using any tool on client matters.

• Confirm that any AI tool you use operates with a zero data retention policy — consumer AI platforms may retain and train on your prompts, which creates confidentiality exposure under Rule 1.6 of the ABA Model Rules and ABA Formal Opinion 512.
• Verify that the tool meets professional compliance standards (SOC2, HIPAA) and does not share data across users.

Protect Privilege

• Understand that courts are already drawing distinctions between consumer and professional AI use with real legal consequences.

• Document your AI-directed workflows; attorney oversight and documentation practices remain essential regardless of which tool you use.

Build Verification Into the Workflow

• Choose tools where verification is part of the process, not a separate step. If confirming AI output requires leaving the tool to check sources manually, the efficiency gain disappears.

• Confirm that AI-generated summaries link directly to source material with page and line citations, so every insight is traceable back to the original record.