Professional responsibility

AI can assist the work. The professional remains responsible for it.

Descrybe helps legal professionals find and inspect primary law, verify citations and quotations, and review later treatment. It does not replace professional judgment, source review, or the ethical rules that apply to a lawyer, firm, court, client, or matter.

Updated September 17, 2026

Professional duties

ABA Formal Opinion 512 applies existing professional obligations to lawyers’ use of generative AI, including competence, confidentiality, communication, supervision, candor, and reasonable fees. State, local, court, client, and employer requirements may impose additional or different obligations.

This page provides general educational information, not legal advice or jurisdiction-specific ethics guidance. Consult the rules and guidance that apply to your work.

In an organization-managed AI environment, the organization controls which connectors are enabled and which provider settings apply. Connecting Legal Engine does not by itself give Descrybe access to the organization's tenant, document repositories, email, or complete assistant conversations; Descrybe receives the focused tool requests the assistant sends.

Competence and supervision

Understand the capabilities and limits of the AI system and the legal research tools it can call. A lawyer remains responsible for supervising the workflow and the resulting work product.

Confidentiality and data minimization

Use an environment approved by your organization, consider the sensitivity of client information, and provide no more client or matter information than the task requires. Review the terms, data practices, administrator controls, and matter-specific obligations that apply to every service in the workflow.

Verification and candor

Check material propositions against the underlying authority. Confirm citations, quoted language, jurisdiction, procedural posture, and later treatment before relying on or submitting AI-assisted work.

Client communication

Determine whether the circumstances, engagement terms, client instructions, or applicable rules require disclosure of or consent to the use of an AI tool.

Fees and expenses

Apply the rules governing reasonable fees, actual time worked, and disclosure of expenses. Efficiency gained from AI does not remove the lawyer’s billing obligations.

Court and jurisdiction rules

Check the rules that govern the particular court, agency, client, and jurisdiction. AI policies and disclosure requirements are not uniform and can change.

Review before relying on AI-assisted work

Descrybe’s verification tools make important checks easier to perform and inspect. They do not certify the correctness or completeness of an entire legal analysis.

  1. 01

    Identify the legal question, jurisdiction, material facts, and procedural posture before searching.

  2. 02

    Use primary-law search to locate relevant cases, statutes, regulations, constitutional provisions, and rules.

  3. 03

    Open the underlying authority and confirm that it supports the proposition for which it will be used.

  4. 04

    Verify important quotations and review surrounding context rather than relying on an extracted sentence alone.

  5. 05

    Review later treatment and citing decisions; a treatment signal is a research aid, not a full citator or a conclusion about binding authority.

  6. 06

    Apply independent professional judgment and comply with client, court, employer, and jurisdiction-specific requirements.

Sources and related information

Read the ABA opinion addressing generative AI tools and professional duties.

Review connector boundaries, providers, retention, access, and current security practices.

Review Descrybe’s public security, privacy, legal, coverage, and availability information.

See the research and verification capabilities available in supported AI environments.