Your duty of technology competence now includes AI, and the wrong tool puts client confidentiality and your firm's standing at risk in the same motion. We're the human bridge that keeps AI a defensible advantage in your practice, not an ethics complaint waiting to happen. We advise on the technology; the professional-responsibility calls stay with your lawyers.
The duty of competence already reaches "the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology," and AI is now squarely that technology. It touches confidentiality under Rule 1.6, supervision of outside tools under Rule 5.3, and candor to the tribunal the moment a hallucinated citation reaches a court. ABA Formal Opinion 512 (2024) put the expectations in writing: verify AI output independently, get informed consent before confidential information enters a self-learning tool, and understand a tool's terms before you rely on it. Meanwhile, starting with Mata v. Avianca, a growing list of sanctions orders has landed on lawyers who let fabricated AI citations slip into filings.
A generic IT provider resells tools and keeps the network up. An AI vendor is paid when you buy. We take no commissions and sell no software. We inventory the AI tools your firm already uses, read the terms and data flow in plain language, classify which tools may touch matter data, and build the policy and verification workflow that keep the firm defensible. We are your technology and AI advisor, not your ethics counsel: we make sure your lawyers have the facts and the controls, and the legal judgments stay theirs.
The confidentiality question in depth: what happens to privileged data inside an AI tool, and how to keep it out of the ones that would retain or train on it.
Read more ›Approved tools, prohibited uses, the human-verification requirement, and confidentiality handling, set down in a policy your firm can supervise and defend.
Read more ›An independent read of what your AI and cloud tools actually do with your data: training, retention, subprocessors, and security, in plain language.
Read more ›A fixed-scope read on where your firm stands on AI and confidentiality risk, and what to fix first, before an adoption decision or an incident forces it.
Read more ›An independent vendor-and-terms review of the AI and cloud tools in use at a multi-attorney professional practice: each tool classified by data-sensitivity risk, with a written use policy delivered at the end. Professional-firm engagements are anonymized by default; we speak to the work and share references privately, never a public client roster.
Yes, with deliberate controls. The exposure is matter data flowing into a tool whose terms let it retain or train on inputs. We inventory the tools your firm already uses, read the terms and data handling, and classify which tools may touch confidential matter data and which may not, the heart of keeping privileged data out of the wrong tool. Your lawyers make the ethics call; we give them the technical facts to make it soundly.
In Mata v. Avianca (S.D.N.Y. 2023) a court imposed Rule 11 sanctions after a brief cited fabricated cases invented by ChatGPT, and a growing list of sanctions orders has followed across federal and state courts. The single control that prevents it is independent human verification of every AI-produced citation, quote, and authority before it reaches a filing. We build that verification requirement into your firm's AI-use policy and workflow.
ABA Formal Opinion 512 (2024) is the first formal ethics guidance on generative AI. It indicates that lawyers should not rely on AI output without independent verification, should obtain informed client consent before putting confidential information into self-learning tools, and should understand a tool's terms of use and data handling before relying on it. We translate those expectations into technical controls and a written policy; your firm's counsel makes the professional-responsibility determinations.
Opinion 512 points to informed client consent before confidential information is entered into a self-learning tool that trains on inputs. Whether and how consent is required on a given matter is a legal judgment for your lawyers. Our job is to make sure you know which tools trigger that question and to keep confidential matter data out of the tools that would.
It comes down to the terms and the deployment, not the brand. A consumer chatbot that trains on inputs is a different risk class than an enterprise deployment with contractual no-training and retention limits. We sort the tools into permitted, restricted, and prohibited for confidential matter data, and put the reasoning in writing so the firm can defend it.
I use AI to make good people faster, sharper, and harder to beat, never to replace them. Better, faster, stronger: the goal is a firm that grows and hires more humans, not fewer.
Before a tool is adopted, before an incident, before a filing goes out. One partner-level conversation about where your firm stands and what to protect first.
DeSoto Consulting LLC provides technology and AI advisory services and does not provide legal advice or legal representation.
No pitch deck. No sales process. Just a straight conversation about what you're facing.