Artificial intelligence joined legal practice with the advent of autocorrect, text editors, electronic discovery, search tools, and chatbots. Now it supplements most lawyers’ toolboxes, even if they are unaware of it, through pre-filling forms, identifying potentially related case law and suggesting relevant searches, or providing analyses of judges’ and opposing counsels’ decision-making. But that is the world of classic artificial intelligence.

A new era of artificial intelligence is rocketing into legal tech. For lawyers, this version of artificial intelligence creates new outputs (briefs, contracts, etc.) based on predictions derived from what it learns through databases it’s trained on. Counsel, courts, and bar associations are grappling with the impact of this “generative” artificial intelligence (“GAI”) on the practice of law and each lawyer’s duty of basic technological competence. GAI takes a giant leap forward yet presents significant ethical considerations for lawyers before and while using GAI in client representation.

What is…