California's new statute on attorneys and generative AI: what § 6068.1 requires by January 1, 2027.

One bill, five sections of law.

Senate Bill 574 (Umberg) of the 2025–2026 Regular Session was enrolled on September 4, 2026 and signed on September 30, 2026. It carries no urgency clause, so it takes effect on January 1, 2027. It does five things:

• Business and Professions Code § 6068.1 (new). Duties for an attorney who uses generative AI to assist in the practice of law. This is the section most firms need to read.
• Code of Civil Procedure § 128.7 (amended). A paper filed in any court may not contain a citation the responsible attorney has not personally verified, including a citation provided by generative AI.
• Code of Civil Procedure § 1282.1 (new). An arbitrator may not delegate any part of the decisionmaking process to a generative AI tool, and may not rely on AI-generated information outside the record without disclosure to the parties.
• Code of Civil Procedure § 180 (new). The Judicial Council is to revisit publicly, and revise as necessary, Standard 10.80 of the Standards of Judicial Administration.
• Business and Professions Code § 6173 (amended). Complaint procedures in the State Bar's certification program for alternative dispute resolution providers.

The chapter number had not been posted when this page was written. The quotations below are from the enrolled text on the Legislature's site, which is the text the Governor signed.

Section 6068.1(a), verbatim.

(a) (1) Nothing in this section shall be construed to abrogate an attorney's duty to exercise reasonable competence and diligence in the practice of law.

(2) An attorney shall not delegate the practice of law to generative artificial intelligence.

(3) An attorney who uses generative artificial intelligence to assist in the practice of law shall do all of the following:

(A) Not enter confidential, personal identifying, and other nonpublic information into a generative artificial intelligence system for which access to confidential, personal identifying, or other nonpublic information the attorney inputs into the system is not restricted to the attorney and persons authorized by the attorney under obligations to protect the confidentiality of the information.

(B) Take reasonable steps to do both of the following:
(i) Verify the accuracy of generative artificial intelligence outputs, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of all case and statutory citations.
(ii) Correct any erroneous or hallucinated output in any material used by the attorney.

(C) Disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence to the court for all documents submitted to the court and consider whether to disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence if it is used to create content provided to the public. Bus. & Prof. Code § 6068.1(a), as added by Senate Bill 574 (2025–2026 Reg. Sess.), effective January 1, 2027.

Subdivision (b) defines two terms. "Generative artificial intelligence" is "an artificial intelligence system that can generate derived synthetic content, including text, images, video, and audio that emulates the structure and characteristics of the system's training data." "Personal identifying information" includes driver's license numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, National Crime Information and Criminal Identification and Information numbers, addresses and phone numbers of parties, victims, witnesses and court personnel, medical or psychiatric information, financial information, account numbers, and any other content sealed by court order or deemed confidential by court rule or statute.

What the section asks, in plain words.

1. Do not delegate the practice of law to the machine.

Paragraph (a)(2) is one sentence with no exceptions. Paragraph (a)(3) then speaks of an attorney who uses generative AI "to assist in" the practice of law. Read together, the statute permits assistance and prohibits delegation. The line between the two is the attorney's own judgment: who decided what the claim is, what the document says, what goes to the client, and what goes to the court.

2. Know who can reach what you put in.

Paragraph (a)(3)(A) does not ban any product by name or by category. It sets a condition on the system. Confidential, personal identifying, and other nonpublic information may go only into a system where access to what the attorney inputs is restricted to the attorney and to persons the attorney authorized, who are under obligations to protect its confidentiality.

That makes two questions for every tool. Who can reach the inputs, counting the vendor, the vendor's staff, and every company that processes data for the vendor? And is each of them a person the attorney authorized, bound to confidentiality? A consumer chatbot used under ordinary consumer terms is hard to square with that condition. A tool with a written agreement, named processors, and access controls may satisfy it. The attorney has to be able to say which is true, and why.

3. Verify the output, and correct it.

Paragraph (a)(3)(B) requires reasonable steps to verify the accuracy of AI outputs, including all case and statutory citations, and to correct erroneous or hallucinated output in any material the attorney uses. The amendment to Code of Civil Procedure § 128.7 is stricter for court papers: a filed paper "shall not contain any citations that an attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally verified, including any citation provided by generative artificial intelligence." That rule sits in subdivision (b) of § 128.7, the subdivision whose violation supports sanctions under subdivision (c).

4. Disclose to the court; consider disclosure to the public.

Paragraph (a)(3)(C) has two parts. The attorney shall disclose the use of generative AI to the court "for all documents submitted to the court." And the attorney shall consider whether to disclose its use when it is used to create content provided to the public.

Four questions the section does not answer.

A careful reader should know where the statute stops. These are observations about the text, and each may be answered by rule, guidance, or decision after this page is written.

• "Delegate" and "the practice of law" are not defined in the section. The section does not say how much review turns a machine's draft into the attorney's work.
• The disclosure duty does not state its trigger or its form. The text does not say what degree of use requires disclosure, or whether a line in the document, a certificate, or something else satisfies it. Courts' own rules and standing orders may fill this in, and several already address AI.
• "Reasonable steps" is a standard, not a procedure. What is reasonable for a citation is plain enough: read the authority. What is reasonable for a summary of four hundred pages of records is less so.
• The section states duties, not remedies. It sits in the State Bar Act beside the duties of § 6068. The § 128.7 amendment is the part with an express sanctions mechanism.

A checklist for a firm.

None of this requires buying anything. It requires knowing what the firm already does.

• Inventory. List every generative AI tool anyone at the firm uses for client work, including the ones built into software the firm already has, and the personal accounts nobody approved.
• The access answer, in writing, for each tool. Who can reach what goes in. Under what agreement. Which outside companies process it. Whether inputs are kept, and whether they are used for training. If the firm cannot answer, confidential information does not go into that tool.
• A rule for what may be entered where. The statute's list of personal identifying information is long and includes medical and financial information. Staff need a rule they can follow at the keyboard.
• A citation rule. No citation leaves the firm in a court paper unless the responsible attorney has personally read the authority. Decide how the firm will show that it was done.
• A verification habit for everything else. Summaries, chronologies, and drafts are outputs too. Decide what checking is reasonable for each kind of work, and write it down.
• A disclosure practice for court filings. Decide the firm's form of disclosure, check each court's rules and standing orders, and make it part of the filing routine.
• A look at public content. Websites, newsletters, and client alerts made with AI fall under the "consider whether to disclose" clause.
• Supervision. Paralegals and staff use these tools under an attorney's direction. The duties run to the attorney.
• Client-side use. Clients use consumer AI on their own matters. Decide what the firm tells them, and when.
• If anyone at the firm serves as an arbitrator, read § 1282.1 separately. Its rule is stricter than the attorney rule.

Ask any AI vendor, including us.

These follow the statute's own words. A vendor that cannot answer one in writing has answered it.

1. Who can access what my firm puts in? Name the roles at your company, and the circumstances.
2. Which outside companies process it? Name each one, and say what each can reach.
3. Under what confidentiality obligations? Show me the clause that binds you, and tell me what binds them.
4. Is anything kept after it is processed, and is anything used to train a model? By you or by anyone who processes it for you.
5. Can access be limited to the people on one matter, and can you show me afterward who had it?
6. How does the tool help me verify? Does it show the source for what it tells me, or only the answer?
7. What does the tool do without an attorney deciding? If it sends, files, advises, or chooses on its own, that is the delegation question.
8. Does it learn, or "improve," from my clients' matters, in any form, under any name? Anonymization is not the test for waiver; disclosure to a third party for a purpose beyond the representation can be.
9. Who holds the written opinion that it preserves privilege, and may I rely on it? If the answer is "our terms of service," the answer is no one.

Built against the same questions.

ClearlyConcise is a private workspace an attorney and a client use together, at the attorney's direction, for intake, documents, and drafts. It was designed before this statute, around the State Bar's guidance on generative AI and the first court decisions on AI and privilege. It is in pre-pilot development, and a limited, attorney-supervised pilot is anticipated for late 2026.

No software complies with § 6068.1 for an attorney. The duties are the attorney's. What a tool can do is make the answers true and make them showable. This is how ours is built:

• Access by matter. Each matter is its own sealed file, encrypted under its own key. It can be read by the members of that matter at the firm and by that matter's client, who joins only at the attorney's invitation. No one else has a way in, including our own staff.
• Named processors, written obligations. The models run at Amazon Web Services under a configuration in which the firm's content is not kept after processing. Nothing is used to train a model. Our agreement with the firm states our confidentiality obligation and names the outside processor.
• The attorney decides. The AI organizes what the client said, compares documents, asks questions, and prepares working drafts for the attorney's review. It does not choose a legal theory. Nothing reaches a client until an attorney approves it, and that approval is recorded.
• Sources beside statements. When the workspace reports what the record says, it shows the passage and who said it, so the attorney can check it. Verification remains the attorney's.
• Information, never advice. The client side gives the client the firm's own approved words. It does not give legal advice.

ClearlyConcise does not create privilege or work-product protection and makes no representation about how a court or the State Bar will read § 6068.1. Whether a firm's use of any tool satisfies the statute depends on the firm's own facts.

For attorneys.

If you practice in California and want to talk through the statute, the checklist, or the workspace, we would value hearing from you.

johnjensen@johnmjensen.com

This page is general information about a statute. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Sources: the enrolled text of Senate Bill 574 on leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, and the Governor's signing announcement of September 30, 2026.