From validating accuracy and ensuring human creativity to preserving confidentiality and respecting copyright, the OBA has compiled an AI Policy Checklist to help you mitigate risk while reaping the benefits of using AI tools in legal practice.
Protecting Sensitive / Confidential Information
- Make it required practice to review the provider’s privacy policies and terms and conditions before implementing any AI tool in your practice to ensure you are comfortable with the way your data will be used and stored.
- If you have an Enterprise version, make sure your staff only use the Enterprise version.
- If you’re not using an Enterprise version, never put information in that will reveal directly or indirectly the name of your client or any other confidential or privileged information.
- Remind staff to consider the aspects of the transaction or case that are unique and that will identify your client or sensitive information.
Validating Accuracy
- To manage the risks associated with AI and maximize its potential value, organizations should implement policies that mandate the review and validation of AI-generated work.
- Additionally, there should be a structured process for identifying, reporting, and correcting errors.
- This process not only improves the accuracy and reliability of AI tools but also encourages a culture of continuous learning and improvement, essential for leveraging AI technologies responsibly.
- Direct that AI be used only as a secondary source, requiring due diligence of finding the primary source to verify the information.
- Even when the AI tool cites a credible source for its information, the next step should be to check that source directly.
Mitigating Copyright Risks
- Source Creditation: Ensure the content is appropriately sourced by asking the program to cite its sources - and then, verify the existence and accuracy of the sources it cites.
- The Original Idea: Ensure that generative AI hasn’t given you a theory or an idea that belongs to another author. Even if you re-word the content, this raises issues of intellectual property infringement and plagiarism. Creative prompting could generate a new idea, but extreme caution should be used before claiming the idea as your own.
- Legal Compliance: All AI-generated outputs must comply with existing intellectual property and copyright laws, adhering to the legal standards of practice.
- Indemnification Awareness: Users should be informed about and encouraged to utilize AI tools that offer copyright infringement indemnification within their terms of use.
Preserving Human Creativity
- It is up to you to do the creative work. Think about the big picture and analogous areas of law from which you can drive creative arguments.
- You know the client and their particular human needs and sensitivities. Make sure these human considerations are factored into what arguments are included and how they are expressed.