ChatGPT for lawyers: useful, with the ethics rules in view

2 min read · Updated

The short answer

ChatGPT can help lawyers with first drafts, summaries and plain-language explanations for clients. The ABA's 2024 guidance on generative AI stresses competence, confidentiality and reasonable fees, and courts have sanctioned lawyers for filing briefs with invented case citations. Verify every citation, and keep client confidences out of tools that don't protect them.

Where it saves time

  • Plain-language explanations for clients of a process or document.
  • First drafts of routine letters and website content.
  • Summaries of long documents, as a starting point you still read.
  • Checklists for intake and matter setup.

The ethics guidance

The ABA's Formal Opinion 512 (2024) addresses lawyers' use of generative AI: understand the tool well enough to use it competently, protect client confidences, supervise its output, and bill fairly for time actually spent. Many state bars have issued their own guidance too.

Citations

Generative AI can produce case names and quotes that don't exist. Lawyers have been sanctioned for filing them. Every citation gets checked in a real legal research tool before it goes anywhere.

Questions

Can lawyers use ChatGPT?

Yes, within the professional rules: competence, confidentiality and supervision apply to AI output like any other work.

Can I put client details into ChatGPT?

Only in a tool and plan whose data protections satisfy your confidentiality duties. Many firms keep client facts out entirely.

Should our firm have an AI policy?

Yes: which tools are approved, what never goes in, and who reviews the output.

Keep reading

Local SEO ServicesAll of Lehvel Learn

Want to discuss Search Presence?

Book a time with Lehvel and we’ll go through what your business actually needs.

Reserve a time

Other Lehvel services