Law in Failure: Proposed Model Rule on Efficient Legal Services and Disciplinary Sanctions

The following is proposed language for adoption, including proposed penalties. The conduct rule should be adopted together with a companion disciplinary enforcement provision.

Proposed Rule 1.5A — Competent and Efficient Use of Legal Technology

(a) Professional standard. A lawyer shall use reasonably available legal technology, including artificial intelligence, when the lawyer knows or reasonably should know that its competent use would materially reduce the client’s total cost or delay, or materially improve the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the legal work, while satisfying the duties of competence, confidentiality, and compliance with applicable law and court orders.

(b) Assessment of benefits. The lawyer shall evaluate the complete assignment, including preparation, verification, correction, technology expenses, and necessary human judgment. The assessment shall consider demonstrated performance on comparable tasks and the client’s objectives and resources. A lawyer shall maintain familiarity with relevant technology ordinarily available to competent practitioners in the lawyer’s field.

(c) Justified exceptions. A lawyer may decline a particular technology because of inadequate reliability, confidentiality risks that cannot reasonably be controlled, legal restrictions, disproportionate implementation costs, or an urgent deadline preventing safe implementation. An informed client preference for a lawful alternative may also justify that alternative if the resulting fee remains reasonable.

When declining technology materially affects cost or quality, the lawyer shall document the specific reason and explain the consequences to the client, ordinarily before incurring the additional expense.

(d) Prohibited motives. Preserving billable hours, satisfying billing quotas, protecting revenue from unnecessary labor, or general hostility to technology shall not justify declining a method that satisfies paragraph (a). A lawyer shall not manufacture unnecessary work or knowingly retain an inefficient method primarily to increase the client’s bill.

(e) Billing. Hourly charges shall reflect professional time actually and reasonably devoted to the matter. A lawyer shall not:

• Charge hypothetical hours eliminated by technology.
• Present automated processing time as human labor.
• Inflate review time to recover revenue lost through efficiency.
• Disguise ordinary overhead as an undisclosed client expense.

Fixed and contingent fees remain subject to Rule 1.5. Substantial reductions in required labor shall be considered with the other relevant fee factors. Technology expenses must be reasonable, accurately described, and disclosed before being incurred. Client agreement shall not validate an improper fee.

(f) Training. General education necessary to maintain technological competence shall be paid for by the lawyer or firm. Reasonable training costs for an unfamiliar tool specifically requested by the client may be charged only under an advance written agreement identifying those costs.

(g) Responsibility for quality. The lawyer remains responsible for the finished work. Appropriate professional review shall include verification of material factual assertions, cited authorities, and legal propositions, and correction of material errors or omissions. Required confidentiality safeguards and client consent shall be secured before protected information is submitted to a provider.

(h) Records and disclosure. The lawyer shall maintain accurate billing records and concise records of material decisions under paragraph (c). Preservation, discovery, confidentiality, privilege, and work-product obligations shall be applied to the particular materials. AI histories shall receive no automatic presumption of either protection or disclosure.

(i) Supervisory accountability. Managerial and supervisory lawyers shall establish reasonable procedures for compliance. A lawyer who orders or knowingly ratifies a violation shall be individually accountable. A managerial or supervisory lawyer who knows of a violation while its consequences can be avoided or mitigated and fails to take reasonable remedial action shall also be accountable.

Proposed disciplinary penalties

These are presumptive starting points, subject to findings concerning culpability, injury, and aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

Established misconduct	Proposed presumptive penalty
First, isolated negligent violation; little or no injury; prompt correction; low risk of repetition	Private admonition and required remedial education
Negligent violation causing material avoidable expense or a material quality defect	Public reprimand and supervised probation for up to 12 months
Knowing or reckless violation causing material injury or a substantial risk of injury	Suspension for 6–12 months
Intentional false billing, deliberate concealment of overcharges, or repeated knowing violations	Suspension for 1–3 years
Systematic dishonest exploitation causing serious injury, theft of client funds, or repeated intentional abuse demonstrating unfitness after prior discipline	Disbarment

For this provision, recklessness means conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the conduct violates Rule 1.5A.

Financial redress. In addition to discipline, the adjudicator shall order cancellation of unpaid improper charges and repayment of improper fees already collected, with interest at the adopting jurisdiction’s legal judgment rate from the date of payment. Additional fee disgorgement may be ordered for serious dishonesty. The amount shall be established through evidence of the actual assignment and legitimate services provided.

Aggravating factors. Dishonest financial motives, multiple affected clients, vulnerable clients, prior discipline, false records, obstruction, retaliation, and refusal to make ordered repayment shall support increased sanctions.

Mitigating factors. Prompt voluntary correction, cooperation, a clean disciplinary history, and effective remedial measures may support reduced sanctions. Repayment shall not automatically terminate disciplinary proceedings.

Enforcement conditions. Orders may require education, independent billing audits, supervised practice, and reimbursement of reasonable disciplinary proceeding costs. Public disciplinary decisions shall identify the lawyer, misconduct, financial redress, and reasons for the sanction while protecting client information.

Proof and procedure. Disciplinary counsel shall prove misconduct and the required culpability by clear and convincing evidence. The lawyer shall receive notice, an opportunity to challenge evidence, impartial adjudication, and review. Decisions shall be assessed using information reasonably available when the work occurred. Nonuse of AI or an adverse case outcome alone shall not establish misconduct.

Effective date. The new obligations shall apply prospectively beginning 180 days after adoption. Existing duties concerning competence, confidentiality, truthful billing, and lawful fees remain enforceable during the transition.

This proposal extends existing ABA guidance on AI competence and actual-time billing. Its sanction structure draws on ABA disciplinary enforcement provisions, which include restitution, fee disgorgement, reprimand, suspension, and disbarment; the specific triggers and periods above are proposed additions. americanbar.org

Law in Failure Lawyers Who Refuse AI Make Clients Pay for Inefficiency

A lawyer who knowingly makes a client pay for avoidable work is ripping off that client. The hours may be real. The waste is real, too. AI now gives the profession a practical test of whose interests it puts first.

A client needs a contract, a complaint, or an expert report. An available AI system could produce a useful draft in minutes and help identify omissions, test arguments, and improve the finished document. A lawyer who rejects that opportunity should have to explain what the client gains from the extra expense.

The client should not have to finance the lawyer’s refusal to modernize.

Consider an illustration. A lawyer expects to spend 12 hours preparing a finished document. AI produces a more thorough initial draft in 12 minutes. Suppose the lawyer actually spends 12 minutes preparing the AI inputs and another full hour verifying and revising the result. The billable work totals 1.2 hours.

Illustrative method	Actual lawyer time	Fee at $500 per hour
Manual preparation and review	12 hours	$6,000
AI inputs plus professional review	1.2 hours	$600
Difference	10.8 hours	$5,400

These are illustrative figures, not measurements of every legal assignment. They show why necessary human review does not, by itself, erase the possibility of enormous savings. Actual preparation, investigation, negotiation, or filing work must also be counted when the assignment requires it.

The quality argument has evidence behind it. A randomized study published in April 2026 tested upper-level law students using a legal AI tool, a reasoning model, or no AI. Both tools improved overall work quality and speed. The strongest gains appeared in complaint analysis and persuasive writing. The study found no meaningful overall benefit on its short nondisclosure agreement task, and accuracy did not improve consistently across tasks. The sensible conclusion is to evaluate the tool against the assignment. journals.sagepub.com

Evidence also extends to practicing lawyers. A September 2026 working paper studied 133 patent lawyers at eleven U.S. firms in a three-month randomized trial. Blinded expert attorneys judged the work. Access to a custom AI drafting assistant improved benchmark drafting quality at both ten and ninety days, with larger gains among junior lawyers. The study also found that lasting gains in unaided professional judgment were concentrated among senior lawyers. That supports combining AI with expertise and continued training. shapingwork.mit.edu

Better legal work can mean identifying a missing issue, exposing an unsupported assertion, or reorganizing an argument so that a judge can understand it. I would have lawyers test AI for those purposes and measure the result. A longer document earns no credit merely for being longer. Completeness means covering the relevant issues accurately.

Hourly billing creates a financial incentive that deserves scrutiny: fewer hours can mean less revenue from that client. Professional ethics must keep the client’s interests ahead of that incentive.

The clearest existing rule is straightforward. ABA Formal Opinion 512 says an hourly lawyer must charge actual time, including genuine review, rather than the hours the work would have taken without AI. A lawyer cannot turn a 12-minute drafting exercise into a fictional 12-hour entry. www.americanbar.org

Alabama’s 2026 guidance reinforces that distinction and generally treats AI subscription charges as office overhead unless the client agrees otherwise. Genuine supervision and legal judgment are compensable. Saved hours are not working hours. alabar.org

Knowingly inventing hours also implicates Pennsylvania Rule 8.4(c), which prohibits dishonesty and misrepresentation. A fabricated invoice deserves disciplinary scrutiny. www.padisciplinaryboard.org

The harder problem is the lawyer who actually spends twelve hours doing work manually when a safe, reliable method could accomplish the assignment far more efficiently. Pennsylvania Rule 1.5 prohibits illegal or clearly excessive fees. Its factors include the time and labor required, the difficulty, skill, customary charges, and results. Hours actually worked are therefore only part of the inquiry. www.padisciplinaryboard.org

My argument is that knowingly preserving unnecessary labor solely to enlarge an invoice should support an excessive-fee challenge. Current guidance does not establish a universal duty to use AI for every document. North Carolina expressly leaves the choice generally to professional judgment, while requiring client input when the decision to use or decline AI implicates fees. Those qualifications leave room for judgment; they should also require an explanation of avoidable expense. www.ncbar.gov

Applicable state rules govern discipline; ethics opinions guide their interpretation. The proposed duty to explain avoidable expense should be made explicit.

A fixed fee can reasonably reward expertise, responsibility, results, and efficiency. It does not remove the fee limits. Opinion 512 specifically warns that keeping the same flat fee after AI substantially reduces the work may be unreasonable. A lawyer should be able to explain the value provided at the agreed price. www.americanbar.org

Nor should the client ordinarily pay for the lawyer’s general education in using AI. Opinion 512 treats learning a tool regularly used in practice as part of maintaining competence, with a limited exception where a client specifically requests an unfamiliar tool and agrees to the training charge. www.americanbar.org

A recent federal decision also weakens a blanket objection that AI drafting necessarily destroys protection for litigation preparation. In Villanueva v. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, No. 2:24-cv-00125-ART-DJA, Judge Anne R. Traum’s September 29, 2026 order partly reversed a demand for an expert’s entire ChatGPT history. storage.courtlistener.com

The expert’s AI-generated case summaries were discoverable because he considered them in forming his opinions. His prompts, deposition preparation outline, and report drafting material were protected. The court also held that his use of ChatGPT did not waive otherwise applicable protection in that instance. It treated ChatGPT as research, drafting, and editing software. This was a discovery ruling, not a certification of the expert’s accuracy or a decision about legal fees. storage.courtlistener.com

The lesson is to handle AI materials competently. Rule 26 distinguishes facts or data considered by a reporting expert from protected drafts. Counsel must plan for required preservation and disclosure while asserting applicable protection. Ordinary contract drafting does not automatically qualify for litigation work-product protection. www.law.cornell.edu

Accuracy and confidentiality are real obligations. Stanford researchers’ 2024 evaluation found that the particular commercial legal research tools tested still generated hallucinations in roughly 17 to 33 percent of queries. That is a historical finding about those systems and tests, not a current error rate for every AI product. It establishes why verification matters. RegLab

Lawyers should verify authorities, compare factual summaries with source records, review the provider’s data practices, and comply with the court’s applicable rules. Alabama’s guidance requires professional judgment and safeguards. These duties belong in a competent workflow. They warrant necessary review time and can justify declining a particular tool when the risks cannot be managed. alabar.org

I propose a stronger express professional standard:

When a reasonably available technology can materially reduce cost or improve legal work without compromising accuracy, confidentiality, or the client’s objectives, the lawyer should use it or explain to the client the reason for declining it.

Bar authorities should adopt that standard and examine fee complaints for unnecessary labor as well as invented hours. Law firms should compare completed work, including verification costs, and record where AI helps, where it fails, and how the client benefits.

Clients should ask for clear answers before agreeing to the price:

• What parts of this assignment can AI perform safely and effectively?
• What human investigation, judgment, and review remain necessary?
• How will the savings affect my hourly bill or fixed fee?
• If you decline AI, what specific benefit justifies the additional cost?

Lawyers can earn more by serving additional clients and offering work those clients could previously not afford. North Carolina’s opinion expressly recognizes increased throughput as a legitimate benefit of AI efficiency. www.ncbar.gov

Lower drafting costs can make a sound contract, a meritorious complaint, or a carefully checked expert report affordable. That opportunity deserves a place in every serious discussion of access to justice.

The client’s money belongs to the client. Professional ethics should protect it from avoidable waste.