Publication Title
North Dakota Law Review
Volume
101
Page
461
Year
2026
Abstract
To counter these structural threats, this Article proposes a restrictive, fiduciary-based standard for the use of GPAI in substantive legal work. The proposed “Fiduciary-Grade & Independence Safeguards” (FGIS) standard posits that law firms should presumptively prohibit the use of GPAI for tasks involving legal analysis, strategy, or the synthesis of confidential facts and law. A firm may only depart from this default prohibition if it can certify, with auditable proof, the implementation of two pillars of protection: (1) robust safeguards that neutralize vendor influence and preserve the lawyer’s independent professional judgment, and (2) fiduciary-grade confidentiality controls, including private deployment and contractual “no-training” guarantees, that eliminate the risk of privilege waiver. Where either pillar is missing, the only ethically defensible posture is non-use. This standard translates the abstract duties of the Model Rules into an operational governance framework, providing a clear path for the legal profession to absorb the power of automation without surrendering its foundational values.
Recommended Citation
Edward S. Adams, Independence First ... or Don't Use It: A Fiduciary Standard for Law-firm Use of General AI, 101 N.D. L. Rev. 461 (2026), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/1227.
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
