COURSE DESCRIPTION
The use of artificial intelligence is not some distant prospect. Many of the tools lawyers use today – online research platforms that suggest other areas for research, software packages that help complete forms or propose or assemble language, and discovery tools that sort through documents – are driven by artificial intelligence. These and other AI engineered legal tools raise substantial ethical issues. Are they the unauthorized practice of law? Have lawyers researched their capabilities such that they are competent to use them? How must lawyers supervise their use by non-lawyer staff? This program will provide you with a guide to ethics issues when using software and other technology tools based on AI in law practice.
- What duties do lawyers have to investigate and understand AI in the tools they use?
- Does AI constitute the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) in a state?
- Do software packages that draft language and assemble forms violate ethics rules?
- What supervisory and training obligations do lawyers have for non-lawyer staff using these tools?
- Are there ethics concerns of using AI in discovery?
- Must lawyers warn clients that they use AI?
Speaker:
Thomas E. Spahn is a partner in the McLean, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, LLP, where he has a substantial practice advising clients on properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. For more than 30 years he has lectured extensively on legal ethics and professionalism and has written “The Attorney-Client Privilege and the Work Product Doctrine: A Practitioner’s Guide,” a 750 page treatise published by the Virginia Law Foundation. Mr. Spahn has served as a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and as a member of the Virginia State Bar's Legal Ethics Committee. He received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Yale Law School.