AI ethics guide · Florida
Can a Florida lawyer put client documents into an AI tool?
What Opinion 24-1 says about client confidentiality, and the other duties that come with using AI.
Not legal advice. This is a plain-English summary of Opinion 24-1, written by the team that makes ClientSafeAI, and it hasn't been reviewed by a lawyer. Read the source itself, and ask the Florida bar's ethics hotline if you're unsure how it applies to you.
| Document | Ethics Opinion 24-1 |
|---|---|
| Issued by | The Florida Bar, Board of Governors |
| Date | January 19, 2024 |
| Status | Advisory ethics opinion |
The short answer
Yes, but Florida sets a clear default: get the client’s informed consent before disclosing confidential information to a third-party generative AI tool. You also need to understand the tool’s data-retention policy and whether it is “self-learning”, meaning whether what you put in can be kept and used to shape answers for other users.
What it says about confidentiality
Opinion 24-1 treats confidentiality as the first concern. A Florida lawyer who wants to put confidential client information into a third-party generative AI program should obtain the client’s informed consent first.
Competence and confidentiality overlap here. The opinion expects lawyers to understand the tool well enough to judge the risk, including its data-retention policy and whether it is self-learning. A tool that keeps your input and learns from it presents a different risk from one that discards input once it has answered.
The Bar allows these tools only to the extent the lawyer can reasonably guarantee compliance with their ethical obligations. So “the vendor seems reputable” isn’t the standard. Knowing what happens to the data is.
Though generative AI programs may make a lawyer’s work more efficient, this increase in efficiency must not result in falsely inflated claims of time.
Florida Bar Ethics Opinion 24-1
The other duties it covers
| Supervision | The lawyer stays fully responsible for AI work product and should review it the way they would review a nonlawyer assistant’s work. |
|---|---|
| Fees | No duplicative charges and no inflated hours. Billing must reflect actual time and costs. |
| Advertising | An AI chatbot that talks to prospective or current clients must clearly say it is AI, not a lawyer or firm employee, and must not make claims of superiority that can’t be verified. |
| Candor | Verify AI-generated legal research before relying on it. |
In practice
- Get informed consent before confidential client information goes into a third-party AI tool, and put it in writing.
- Find out whether each tool retains inputs and whether it is self-learning. Note the answer in the file.
- If your website uses a chatbot, make sure it identifies itself as AI.
- Review AI output the same way you would review a paralegal’s draft.
How this compares with ABA Formal Opinion 512
The ABA's national opinion requires a client's informed consent before information relating to the representation goes into a self-learning AI tool, and says boilerplate consent in an engagement letter isn't enough. Read the Opinion 512 summary and firm checklist.
Keep client documents on a server that’s only yours
A Private AI Workspace runs on a GPU server ordered for one firm. Your documents, the AI model and the database stay on it, it never trains on your files, and answers cite the page they came from. It costs $499 a month, flat.
Sources
- The Florida Bar — Ethics Opinion 24-1
- The Florida Bar News — Board of Governors adopts ethics guidelines for generative AI use
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Not legal advice. This is a plain-English summary of Opinion 24-1, written by the team that makes ClientSafeAI, and it hasn't been reviewed by a lawyer. Read the source itself, and ask the Florida bar's ethics hotline if you're unsure how it applies to you.