AI Guide for Lawyers

Artificial intelligence is no longer a "future technology" in the legal sector. With the American Bar Association's publication of its first official AI guide in 2024, lawyers' use of AI has been officially recognized and regulated.

The ABA's July 2024 Formal Opinion 512 document defines ethical standards for competence, informed consent, confidentiality, and billing, creating a guiding resource for lawyers to use artificial intelligence both ethically and with maximum efficiency.

So how can you use AI in accordance with ethical rules and efficiently?

Here is a comprehensive guide we've compiled.

Chapter 1: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Practice

While the legal sector lags behind other sectors in artificial intelligence adaptation, it is rapidly catching up. According to 2024 data, 73% of law firms using AI reported time savings in the document review process.

Areas Where Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the Legal Profession:

1. Legal Research

• Case law research: Relevant precedents within seconds
• Legislative scanning: Instant access to current legal regulations
• Comparative law: Cross-comparison between different legal systems

2. Document Review and Analysis

• Accelerating due diligence processes
• Contract analysis and risk assessment
• Compliance control automation

3. Client Communication

• Automatic email drafts
• Appointment management
• Initial legal consultation chatbots

Chapter 2: Ethical Rules and Compliance

The Florida Bar's 2024 ethical opinion states that lawyers must carefully review the outputs produced by generative AI tools, similar to reviewing a paralegal's work. It also specifically emphasizes that tasks delegated to generative AI should not ethically require the lawyer's personal judgment.

Within this framework, some basic ethical rules and compliance topics that stand out in the use of artificial intelligence can be summarized as follows:

Competent Representation: Lawyers are expected to:

• Understand the limitations and capabilities of AI tools,

• Verify and control outputs produced by AI,

• Have sufficient knowledge and competence about the AI technology they use.

Client Confidentiality:

• Exercise utmost care when entering sensitive client information into AI tools,

• Carefully evaluate the data security standards of AI tools used,

• Review privacy policies of third-party AI providers and take necessary precautions.

Chapter 3: Practical AI Tools and Use Cases

Today, AI tools that can be used in legal practice can generally be evaluated in two main categories: research tools and document management and analysis tools.

Category 1: Research Tools General-purpose large language models such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini can be quite useful, especially in explaining legal concepts, draft preparation, and rapid brainstorming processes.

While these tools save time in offering different perspectives and initial idea development, source verification must be done and caution must be exercised against hallucination (fake information generation) risk during their use.

Hallucination (fake information generation) risk refers to the situation where AI-based language models produce non-existent, incorrect, or unverified information as if expressing it confidently.

This situation is of critical importance especially in legal content; because AI tools can sometimes present non-existent case law, incorrect legal articles, or incomplete sources.

Therefore, AI outputs must always pass through human control and their accuracy must be independently verified.

Category 2: Document Management and Analysis

Among solutions developed specifically for the Turkish market, Leagle stands out. Leagle is designed to accelerate document search and analysis processes with algorithms specific to the Turkish legal system.

The main use areas offered by Leagle are:

• Summarizing legal documents

• Finding relevant precedents through semantic search

• Supporting risk analysis and compliance controls

Unlike general-purpose language models, Leagle uses only special datasets trained on real case data, precedents, and legislation belonging to the Turkish legal system.

Thanks to this structure, Leagle produces only verified and sourced content rather than "making up" any information. Every piece of information produced is based on relevant legal sources and referenced. This makes Leagle a reliable legal technology tool that minimizes the risk of producing false or unfounded information.

Chapter 4: In Which Areas of Law Can AI Be Used?

Artificial intelligence has begun to offer significant advantages to lawyers in many different areas of law. AI-supported tools make a difference in terms of both speed and accuracy, especially in time and labor-intensive tasks.

The main areas where artificial intelligence can be widely used today are:

• Case Law Research: Enables finding the most suitable precedent decisions for the topic by conducting fast and comprehensive research on large datasets.

• Legislation Monitoring and Updates: Can automatically report updates in relevant areas by monitoring constantly changing legislation and regulations.

• Document Review and Summarization: Analyzes long and complex documents, extracts summaries of important points, and can highlight risky elements.

• Contract Preparation and Review: Accelerates the processes of creating standard contract templates and analyzing existing contracts to identify missing or risky clauses.

• Case Strategy Development: Helps determine effective strategies for similar cases by analyzing past decisions and trends.

• Client Information and Communication: Supports generating automatic responses to frequently asked questions and client information processes.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Practice

Artificial intelligence is a force that fundamentally transforms legal practice. However, technology never replaces the lawyer; on the contrary, it makes lawyers work more efficiently, more accurately, and more strategically.

Basic principles must not be forgotten in this transformation:

• AI is a tool, not a decision maker; final judgment always belongs to the lawyer.

• Ethical rules are above everything; client interests must always be the first priority.

• Continuous learning is mandatory; technology is developing rapidly and keeping up with it is essential.

• Transparency is fundamental; clients must be informed about AI use.

The legal sector is going through an AI-supported transformation. If you want to be a pioneer in this transformation and gain a competitive advantage, you can start applying the steps in this guide today.

Remember: Not using AI is also a choice. But this choice means an increasingly competitive disadvantage.