California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 574 on Sept. 30, and it writes rules for lawyers' use of AI into state law. Its core rule is short: "An attorney shall not delegate the practice of law to generative artificial intelligence." The law defines that kind of AI as a system that can produce new text, images, video or audio modeled on the material it was trained on. That is the technology behind chatbots. Lawyers may still use such tools to help them, but the governor's office says the point is to stop them from fully handing over core legal work, such as drafting briefs, the written arguments lawyers file in court, or giving legal judgment.
A lawyer who does use one must do three things. First, they must not type confidential, identifying or other private information into a tool unless only the lawyer and people the lawyer has authorized, who are bound to keep it confidential, can see what goes in. The law's list of identifying information includes dates of birth, Social Security and driver's license numbers, medical and financial details, and the addresses and phone numbers of the people on each side of a case, victims, witnesses and court staff. Second, they must take reasonable steps to check the tool's output, including every case and law it cites, and to fix any errors or hallucinations, where the tool states something false as if it were true. Third, they must tell the court they used it, for all documents they submit.
A second change targets made-up citations in court filings. A brief, motion or any other paper filed in court may not contain a citation that a lawyer responsible for submitting it has not personally checked, whether it came from AI or not. The rule sits in the state's existing law on penalties for improper court filings, so that law's long-standing procedures now apply to citations too. A judge who finds a violation can order sanctions, or penalties, such as a fine paid to the court or, when the other side asked for them, some of the legal costs the violation caused it. A client who has a lawyer can't be ordered to pay money for it. The other side must first send the lawyer its request for sanctions, and can take it to the judge only if the filing isn't withdrawn or fixed within 21 days, or another period the judge sets. When a judge raises the problem without being asked, the lawyer also has 21 days from the judge's order to withdraw or fix the filing. Unless the circumstances are exceptional, a law firm is jointly responsible for violations by its lawyers and staff.
The law also covers arbitrators, who settle disputes outside court. They may not hand any part of their decision-making to an AI tool, and they may not rely on information an AI tool produced from outside the evidence and arguments in the case without telling both sides first and, where practical, letting them comment. The law also tells the Judicial Council, which sets rules for California's courts, to publicly review, and update as needed, one of its standards for court officials so it reflects how AI has developed.
Lawyers who have studied the law say it takes effect on Jan. 1, 2027, and that it makes California the first state to set such rules for lawyers in a statute. They say that until now, the rules came mostly from court rules, individual judges' orders and State Bar guidance. The duties on lawyers' use of AI, from not delegating to telling the court, sit in the State Bar Act, the law that governs lawyers' licenses, so lawyers who break them could also face discipline from the State Bar of California, separate from court sanctions.
Several key questions are left open. The law does not say what counts as delegating the practice of law, and it does not say what a lawyer's disclosure to the court must contain, or whether it covers every filing or only documents where AI did part of the work. It also does not say which lawyer is responsible for checking citations when several work on the same filing. Lawyers who have studied the law expect the State Bar and judges to settle them.