AI for Lawyers

The book

When a federal judge ordered sanctions against attorneys for submitting briefs that cited cases generated — and entirely fabricated — by an AI model, the legal profession received a lesson it could not ignore. The tools available in 2026 are more capable than the one that produced those phantom citations, but they are not more honest. AI for Lawyers works through the actual landscape, from general-purpose models to legal-specific platforms like Harvey, Lexis+ AI, and Westlaw Precision, covering drafting, research, discovery, due diligence, and client communication with the professional constraints that govern each. It takes the model rules, state bar opinions, and confidentiality obligations as fixed points around which practical workflows must be built.

What you'll learn

• Why hallucination is a structural problem in large language models, and how to build verification steps into legal research before output reaches a filing or a client
• The functional differences between general-purpose AI models and legal-specific tools, and which tasks each handles reliably — and which it does not
• How to use AI in drafting contracts, briefs, and memos while maintaining the review standard that professional responsibility requires
• What ABA Formal Opinion 512, the New York State Bar, California, and Florida bar opinions actually say about AI competence, supervision, and disclosure obligations
• Which client information and matter details must not enter a commercial AI interface, and how to structure workflows that protect confidentiality under Model Rule 1.6
• How to address AI-assisted work in billing records with accuracy — the questions courts and clients are beginning to ask, and the answers that will hold up

Who it's for

This book is for practicing attorneys and paralegals who have been handed an AI tool, told to use it, and given no framework for doing so without exposing themselves or their clients to professional risk. It will also serve partners responsible for firm-wide AI adoption, compliance officers drafting internal use policies, and any lawyer who would rather work through the hard guidance now than encounter it first in a disciplinary proceeding.