Virginia AI Ethics Rules for Lawyers

The official instruments

Three instruments, two bodies, one fee question that stands out

Virginia is the most layered non-statute state in this tracker, and getting it right means keeping three separate documents and two separate organizations straight. The mandatory body is the Virginia State Bar, the regulator every Virginia lawyer answers to. It has issued two instruments: short website guidance in 2024, and then Legal Ethics Opinion 1901, a numbered formal opinion. The third document, the Model AI Policy, comes from the Virginia Bar Association, a voluntary bar whose membership is optional and whose publications carry no disciplinary force. Conflating the VSB and the VBA is the single most common error in coverage of Virginia, and it matters: only one of these bodies can discipline a lawyer.

The instrument to lead with is LEO 1901, because it is both the most authoritative and the most distinctive. It is Virginia’s only numbered AI ethics opinion, and it is unusual nationally for carrying Supreme Court of Virginia approval rather than resting on bar-committee authority alone. The VSB Council approved it on June 12, 2025, and it became effective on Supreme Court of Virginia approval on November 24, 2025. That two-step path gives it more weight than a typical advisory opinion. And its subject is narrow by design: reasonable fees and generative AI, rather than the full suite of competence, confidentiality, and supervision duties that opinions in other states sweep together.

The fee holding is the reason Virginia is worth studying closely. LEO 1901 holds that hourly bills must reflect the time actually spent, which is the standard anti-padding rule. But it goes further than most fee discussions by addressing the inverse question: when AI makes work faster, must the lawyer cut the fee proportionately? The opinion answers no. Rule 1.5 does not require a proportionate fee reduction simply because AI sped the work, and value-based or alternative fee arrangements may legitimately capture AI-driven efficiency. That is a more nuanced position than a flat “efficiency gains belong to the client,” and it gives Virginia firms a clearer footing to structure flat-fee and value-based engagements around AI-accelerated work, so long as the hourly billing that does occur is honest.

The earlier guidance and the voluntary policy

LEO 1901 did not write on a blank slate. Before the formal opinion, the Virginia State Bar chose a short website update rather than a full opinion to address generative AI generally. That guidance stated that basic ethical responsibilities are unchanged: a lawyer must vet an AI provider’s data handling before exposing client confidences, must review all output and verify citations, and must extend that verification duty to supervising others’ AI use. On client communication, the guidance took a moderate line: there is no per se requirement to inform a client of generative AI use absent an agreement or elevated risk. And on billing, it stated the baseline rule that LEO 1901 later refined, that a lawyer may not bill hourly clients for time AI saved. The website guidance remains useful for the duties LEO 1901 does not cover, since the formal opinion is fee-focused.

The third document is different in kind. The VBA Model AI Policy, issued by the Virginia Bar Association’s AI task force (established April 2024), is a template internal-governance policy for law firms. It covers AI tool selection and approval, training, data confidentiality, output validation and oversight, and the use of AI in decision-making. It is a drafting aid, not a rule, and it is explicitly the product of a voluntary bar rather than the regulator. A firm can adopt it wholesale, ignore it entirely, or borrow from it, with no disciplinary consequence either way. Its value is practical: it is a ready-made skeleton a Virginia firm can adapt. The policy template on this site serves the same function and can be cross-checked against the VBA model. The formal-versus-voluntary distinction here is the kind of thing the comparison table is built to surface, and the tracker lists all three Virginia entries with their honest types.

What Virginia lawyers should do now

Treat the three instruments as a stack. For fees, follow LEO 1901: bill hourly time honestly, but understand that AI efficiency does not force a proportionate cut, and consider value-based or alternative fee structures where they fit the matter, documenting the basis in the engagement letter. For confidentiality, competence, verification, and supervision, follow the VSB website guidance, since those are the duties the formal opinion does not reach: vet provider data handling before inputting confidences, verify every output and citation, and supervise staff and associate AI use. For internal governance, use the VBA Model AI Policy as a drafting reference, remembering it is voluntary. Because LEO 1901’s analysis aligns with ABA Formal Opinion 512 on the actual-time principle while adding the no-forced-reduction refinement, a Virginia firm building a billing policy should cite both. The changelog records any movement on these entries, and the disclosure comparison shows where Virginia’s no-per-se-disclosure posture sits among the states.

One layer none of the three instruments addresses is the courts. Virginia has no verified statewide court rule on AI in filings, so the obligations that exist at the courthouse are judge-by-judge standing orders rather than a uniform rule. A lawyer filing in Virginia state or federal court should check the assigned judge’s standing orders before each filing, because an individual judge may require a disclosure or certification that none of the three bar-side instruments imposes. The court orders guide covers that per-filing check.