In February, the Oregon State Bar issued Formal Opinion 2026-208, allowing law firms to use autonomous AI for client intake with qualifications. Lawyers must understand and oversee AI interactions to avoid misrepresentation or unintended attorney-client relationships. The opinion stresses lawyer responsibility for accuracy in AI-generated work product.
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Artificial intelligence is reshaping the legal field, prompting the need for lawyers to address ethical considerations outlined in Advisory Opinion 202505. Key duties include competence, diligence, confidentiality, communication, candor, supervision, and reasonable billing. As AI evolves, lawyers must remain informed and prioritize client interests while ensuring ethical responsibility.
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The legal profession requires strong leadership to navigate hybrid work, employee burnout, and evolving expectations. Effective leadership fosters trust, connection, and growth among teams, enhancing overall well-being and productivity. By prioritizing mentorship and support, leaders can transform workplace culture and achieve better outcomes for both individuals and firms.
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The Alaska Bar Association’s Ethics Opinion 2025-1 discusses the use of AI in law practice, emphasizing competence, confidentiality, and billing. It highlights risks associated with AI prompts that may reveal client information, urging lawyers to use closed systems or anonymize prompts when employing AI. Confidentiality remains a critical concern.
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Lawyers are largely reluctant to adopt generative AI due to concerns about accuracy, ethics, and reliability. A survey revealed only 25 percent of legal professionals in Washington use AI, with adoption higher in large firms. The Task Force aims to enhance technology use through education and rule evolution, addressing significant cybersecurity gaps.
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The Oregon State Bar’s ethics opinion, OSB Formal Opinion 2005-205, aligns with ABA Formal Opinion 512 on artificial intelligence in law. It emphasizes competence and confidentiality, advising lawyers to understand AI tools and their contractual confidentiality assurances. Both opinions provide timely guidance amid evolving technology in legal practice.
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On Oct. 30, McCoy Russell LLP announced that one of its tools had not just scored higher than other similar technologies on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Bar Exam, it actually outperformed the average human.
Given the easily stoked concerns of artificial intelligence (AI) eliminating jobs, wiping out industries, and portending the technological destruction of all humanity, it’s as important in this case to talk about what the firm’s Ironcrow AI LLM Sandbox does not do as much as what it can do.
“We’re always looking for tools, what can we use to make our work better,” said firm partner and cofounder John Russell. “… We started playing around and figured out the tools are good at wide-ranging tasks, but not very good at specialized patent work.”
During a recent consultation, a lawyer shared that they regularly did not bill the clients until the end of representation. Fortunately, most clients paid after their case had concluded. Unfortunately, one client stiffed the firm on a $50,000 bill for a multiyear-long matter that even proceeded to trial. To make matters worse, the firm had not sent any bills until the matter concluded, and the large outstanding balance enraged the client. After multiple failed efforts to collect the fees, and not wanting to risk a bar complaint, the firm elected to accept its losses and walk away from the fees. The lawyer I consulted with was seeking practice management help to learn about billing software solutions and best practices. I further learned that the firm was struggling to get bills out on a regular schedule, which delayed its own timekeeping and contributed to an overall time-consuming billing process.
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Making technological investments in a law firm is fundamental for planning for the life of the practice. According to the Thomson Reuters’ 2021 Report on the State of the Legal Market, 84 percent of surveyed partners expected their firms to increase investments in technology after the pandemic. The pandemic has forever changed the use of technology in law firms and altered consumer expectations. Firms who fail to adapt will be left behind.
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Is it OK to hit “Reply All” when responding to an email from another lawyer when that lawyer cc’d their own client on the initiating email? Have you just violated RPC 4.2? Or is including the other client permissible because they were already included in the initial email?
There’s a new advisory opinion which helps you answer this question. The Committee on Professional Ethics just posted Advisory Opinion 202201 on the WSBA website, which takes a comprehensive look at the issue.
The Washington Supreme Court’s Practice of Law Board recently met with the Washington Supreme Court justices to update justices on the latest version of the Board’s Blueprint for a Legal Regulatory Lab, a new framework for regulating innovative legal services and business models. A legal regulatory lab is not a physical place; rather, it is a process that uses Supreme Court orders to define a set of customized regulations to allow legal professionals and entrepreneurs to safely test new services.
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If you’re reading this, then you’re probably looking at client portals and are in the process of deciding whether your law firm should invest in them. In this guide, I’m going to cut the fluff and get straight into what client portals are all about and what they can do for you.
Read More… The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) announced on June 25 that it was delaying the e-filing component of its Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Case Management System (CLJ-CMS) project—also known as Odyssey File & Serve (OFS). Citing concerns raised by the legal community, “Upon careful and lengthy consideration of the comments received, and several productive discussions held with leaders in the District and Municipal Court Judges Association and the District and Municipal Court Managers Association, the Project Steering Committee has decided to delay implementation of OFS while we sort through the various issues and consider other options.”
Read More… In 2017, hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries in a matter of hours were infected with a virus, locking the computers and demanding a ransom to regain access in the now famous WannaCry ransomware attack. How were all these computers infected? Well, remember that security patch update? The commonality between all of the hacked computers is that they failed to upgrade their security patches.
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Legal publishers Casemaker and Fastcase today announce their merger and joint building out of legal research and analytics, news, data, and workflow solutions. The two companies will combine their teams and technologies to innovate research, analytics, and workflow offerings that empower lawyers with powerful digital solutions for their clients.
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The pandemic has forced many lawyers to work remotely. In some instances, that simply means working out of a home office in the same city that the lawyer’s firm is based. In others, however, lawyers have been working from second homes in states in which they are not licensed to practice law. The American Bar Association (ABA) recently addressed this latter aspect of remote work in a new ethics opinion—Formal Opinion 495, issued on Dec. 16.
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