Balancing Innovation and Ethics

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) represents a major shift in technological innovation, capable of transforming daily life and professional sectors, including the law. GenAI leverages advanced models to create new content, from text and images to music. In legal practice, it offers opportunities to streamline tasks like legal research, document drafting, contract review, and client communication. However, widespread use of general-purpose GenAI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) not designed specifically for legal contexts introduces significant risks. These include factual inaccuracies, breaches of confidentiality, privacy violations, and potential copyright infringements. Some US court cases have already revealed the misuse of AI, citing fabricated case-laws. In response, there is growing demand to regulate AI use in the legal field through revised codes of conduct and specific guidelines. This study focuses on the mentioned national and international guidelines issued for legal professionals using GenAI. Using content analysis methods, the research sheds light on shared policies such as the necessity of client consent and confidentiality protection and risks forecasted as intellectual property violations and the reinforcement of cognitive biases, highlighting how bar associations and similar bodies are shaping responsible AI use in legal practice.