Alabama AI Ethics Rules for Lawyers

The official instruments

The newest number in a 141-opinion series

The Alabama State Bar’s Office of General Counsel keeps a numbered formal-opinions index, and when we read it on July 19, 2026 the index stated there are currently 141 formal opinions. The newest is Formal Opinion 2026-01, Artificial Intelligence Use: Best Practices Under Existing Professional Conduct Rules, and the numbering tells its own story: the prior newest opinion in the series was 2023-01, so the series resumes specifically for artificial intelligence. That format matters for weight. This is a numbered formal opinion, not a committee report, a staff column, or a toolkit, which is why the tracker types it as a formal opinion: the bar’s own index places it in the series. It runs eleven pages across thirteen sections, from I. Introduction through XIII. Conclusion, and it addresses every Alabama lawyer regardless of firm size, solo practices included.

No new duties, and no excuses either

The opinion’s premise is stated up front: “artificial intelligence does not create new ethical duties for lawyers. Rather, it recontextualizes longstanding professional obligations—competence, confidentiality, supervision, candor, reasonableness of fees, and client communication—within a new technological environment.” That framing does real work, because it forecloses the two easy positions at once: there is no AI exception to the rules, and there is no waiting period while new rules get written. The operational model follows from it: treat AI, ethically speaking, like a non-lawyer assistant, which pulls the supervision duties into every deployment. From there the opinion works through practice mechanics: vendor selection is a competence issue, closed enterprise systems that do not train on client data are preferred over consumer tools, AI subscription costs are overhead absent a client agreement, and when a client asks whether AI was used, the answer must be honest. Its cautionary examples are chosen to land close to home: alongside Mata v. Avianca, the opinion cites Ibach v. Stewart, an April 2026 decision of the Alabama Supreme Court, and Johnson v. Dunn from the Northern District of Alabama. The conclusion compresses the whole document into one line: “technology may assist the lawyer, but it never replaces the lawyer.” Readers of ABA Formal Opinion 512, which the opinion cites, will recognize the destination; the Alabama contribution is how concretely it maps the route.

The checklist that ends it

The opinion closes with something most ethics opinions never attempt: a per-matter checklist, the kind of artifact a firm can actually adopt. Its items: confirm you checked the court’s local rules and standing orders for AI disclosure or certification requirements, the per-filing habit our court orders guide exists to support; document the AI use, including the tool, the task, and the verification steps taken; confirm that no legal judgment, strategic decision-making, or client advice was delegated to the AI; review AI-generated client communications before they go out; and ensure non-lawyer staff used AI under adequate attorney supervision. Run down that list and you have, in miniature, the national consensus on AI practice hygiene, expressed as questions a lawyer answers at the end of a matter rather than principles recited at the start. A firm that wants those answers to come easily can wire them into a written policy now: the policy template covers each item, the supervision rules breakdown explains the staff-oversight piece, and the confidentiality guide handles the vendor-vetting questions the opinion folds into competence.

A 2026 opinion, and only that precise

The opinion document itself is undated: it closes with the Office of General Counsel’s contact information, and no signature or date block appears anywhere in its eleven pages. The index number makes the year unambiguous, so this tracker records Formal Opinion 2026-01 as issued in 2026, year precision, and declines to assert any month or day, because no primary source states one. That is the same discipline the methodology page describes: date precision is part of the claim, and inventing a month would be a small fabrication in service of tidiness. One more disclosure in the same spirit: the bar’s website blocks automated retrieval, so we read the opinion, both the bar’s HTML opinion page and the full PDF, in a live browser session on July 19, 2026, and the dataset entry carries that verification date. If the bar publishes a dated version, a successor opinion, or any revision, the entry will move and the changelog will record the week it happened.