# Ethical AI Use Under the ABA Model Rules > Legal · AI Course · LEG-6 > Source: https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/course/ethical-ai-under-aba-model-rules > Last updated: 2026-08-25 **A rule-by-rule walk through AI in practice — competence, confidentiality, supervision, fees, and communication — with a firm policy you can adopt.** ## The Short Answer **AI in practice touches at least six Model Rules, and most firm policies address only confidentiality. ibl.ai supports compliance across all of them by running inside the firm where you own all the code and the data — which resolves the 1.6 analysis and makes the 5.1 and 5.3 supervision duties auditable.** On ibl.ai you own all the code and the data, run it model-agnostic across any LLM, and pay with no per-seat pricing — so you can deploy anywhere, from your own cloud to a fully air-gapped network. [Request Access](https://ibl.ai/contact) · [Explore Legal](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal) ## Course facts - **Level:** Foundational - **Duration:** 5 hours across 8 modules - **Format:** Cohort workshop producing firm policy - **Modules:** 8 - **Catalog code:** LEG-6 - **Frameworks covered:** ABA Model Rules, State ethics rules and opinions ## What is this course about? AI touches at least six Model Rules and most firm policies address one. This course works rule by rule: competence under 1.1, confidentiality under 1.6, supervision under 5.1 and 5.3, fees under 1.5, communication under 1.4, and the unauthorized practice question under 5.5 for client-facing agents. ## Who is this course for? - Ethics and risk counsel - Managing partners and general counsel of the firm - Practice group leaders - Professional responsibility committee members ### What do I need before starting? - Licensed attorney - Familiarity with your jurisdiction's rules ## What will I be able to do afterwards? - Apply Rule 1.1 competence to AI tool selection and use - Apply Rule 1.6 confidentiality to AI deployment architecture - Discharge supervisory duties under Rules 5.1 and 5.3 - Address Rule 1.5 fee reasonableness when AI compresses work - Determine Rule 1.4 communication obligations to clients ## What does each module cover? ### Module 1 — What does competence require about AI? Rule 1.1 and the technology comment, and what a lawyer must understand before using a tool. _(40 min)_ **Objectives** - State the technology competence duty - Determine the understanding required before use - Distinguish competence from expertise **Topics:** Rule 1.1 · Technology comment · Required understanding · Competence versus expertise **Activity:** Assess whether your firm's current AI use meets the competence standard. ### Module 2 — What does confidentiality require? Rule 1.6 and reasonable safeguards, connecting the ethics duty to an architecture decision. _(45 min)_ **Objectives** - Apply Rule 1.6 to AI deployment - Determine what safeguards are reasonable - Connect the duty to architecture **Topics:** Rule 1.6 · Reasonable safeguards · Architecture implications · Vendor assessment **Activity:** Map Rule 1.6 requirements onto a specific deployment architecture. ### Module 3 — How do you supervise a tool? Rules 5.1 and 5.3 extended from people to systems, and what supervision means in practice. _(45 min)_ **Objectives** - Apply supervisory duties to AI-assisted work - Design supervision that discharges the duty - Establish accountability across the firm **Topics:** Rules 5.1 and 5.3 · Supervising systems · Practical supervision · Accountability **Activity:** Design the supervision structure for AI-assisted work in one practice group. ### Module 4 — Can you bill for work AI did in seconds? Rule 1.5 fee reasonableness when the efficiency gain is large and the client is paying hourly. _(45 min)_ **Objectives** - Apply fee reasonableness to AI-compressed work - Determine what may be billed - Consider alternative fee structures as the honest response **Topics:** Rule 1.5 · Efficiency and billing · Value versus time · Alternative fees **Activity:** Work through three billing scenarios where AI compressed the work substantially. ### Module 5 — Must you tell the client? Rule 1.4 communication and the circumstances that make disclosure obligatory rather than optional. _(40 min)_ **Objectives** - Determine when disclosure is required - Draft client communication about AI use - Handle a client who objects **Topics:** Rule 1.4 · Disclosure triggers · Communication drafting · Client objection **Activity:** Draft the client communication and engagement letter language. ### Module 6 — Does a client-facing agent practise law? Rule 5.5 and the unauthorized practice question when an agent answers a client directly. _(45 min)_ **Objectives** - Analyze the unauthorized practice question - Set boundaries for client-facing agents - Design supervision that addresses the concern **Topics:** Rule 5.5 · Unauthorized practice · Client-facing boundaries · Supervision design **Activity:** Set the boundary for a client-facing agent and defend it under Rule 5.5. ### Module 7 — How do you track your jurisdiction's guidance? State variation and the ethics opinions that are being issued continuously. _(35 min)_ **Objectives** - Identify your jurisdiction's AI-specific guidance - Track new opinions systematically - Handle multi-jurisdiction practice **Topics:** State variation · Opinion tracking · Multi-jurisdiction practice · Update process **Activity:** Build a tracking process for AI ethics guidance in your jurisdictions. ### Module 8 — Drafting the firm policy The workshop module: a policy mapped rule by rule and ready for committee. _(50 min)_ **Objectives** - Draft a firm AI policy mapped to the rules - Cover every rule the course addressed - Prepare it for professional responsibility committee review **Topics:** Policy drafting · Rule mapping · Committee preparation · Adoption path **Activity:** Draft the policy and map every provision to a rule. ## What is the capstone project? **Firm AI policy mapped rule by rule.** Draft a firm AI policy addressing competence, confidentiality, supervision, fees, client communication, and unauthorized practice, with every provision mapped to a specific rule and a tracking process for jurisdiction guidance. _Deliverable:_ A firm policy with a rule-by-rule crosswalk ready for professional responsibility committee review. ## How are learners assessed? - Every rule addressed or explicitly deferred with reasoning - Billing scenarios worked through with defensible conclusions - Policy reviewed by ethics counsel ## What ships with the course? - **Facilitator guide.** Session-by-session running order, discussion prompts, and the questions that reliably derail a room. - **Learner workbook.** Exercises, checklists, and the templates each module's activity produces. - **Hands-on lab environment.** A sandboxed ibl.ai deployment so exercises run against real agents, not screenshots. - **Assessment bank.** Scenario questions and rubric criteria mapped to each stated learning outcome. - **Source bibliography.** Every primary regulation and standard cited on this page, linked and dated. ## Which AI agents does this course use? - [Compliance Agent](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/agent/compliance-agent) - [Training Agent](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/agent/training-agent) - [Legal Assistant](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/agent/legal-assistant) - [Knowledge Agent](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/agent/knowledge-agent) ## Where does the course material come from? Every module is grounded in primary sources — the regulation, standard, or research itself, not a summary of it. Each was resolved at authoring time. - [Model Rules of Professional Conduct](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/) — American Bar Association. The complete rule set the course walks through. - [CourtListener](https://www.courtlistener.com/) — Free Law Project. Disciplinary and malpractice case law relevant to each rule. - [AI Risk Management Framework](https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework) — NIST. Diligence structure supporting the competence duty. - [Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26](https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_26) — Cornell Legal Information Institute. Procedural obligations intersecting with the supervision duties. ## Delivery notes Binding guidance for anyone preparing and delivering this course: - Module 4 is the module partners resist. Fee reasonableness when AI compresses six hours into one is genuinely uncomfortable, and the course should sit with the discomfort rather than resolving it with a convenient answer. - State opinions are being issued continuously and vary meaningfully. Ship Module 7 as a tracking process rather than a list, and localize the whole course per jurisdiction. - The course frames analysis and does not give ethics advice. State this explicitly and require ethics counsel review before any firm adopts the policy. - Module 6's unauthorized practice analysis is unsettled for client-facing agents. Present the competing positions rather than a conclusion. - Coordinate with LEG-1 and LEG-9 — confidentiality is covered in depth in LEG-1 and governance in LEG-9, and this course should reference rather than repeat them. ## Why run AI training on a platform you own? - **You own the course, not a licence to it.** Course content, learner data, and the platform run inside your perimeter — you own all the code and the data. - **Model-agnostic delivery.** Run the course's AI components on any LLM — Claude, GPT, Llama, Gemini, Command — and switch anytime. - **No per-seat training licences.** Usage-based or self-hosted, so cost tracks actual use rather than headcount. - **Deploy anywhere.** Cloud, private VPC, on-premise, or fully air-gapped — including for cohorts that cannot use public AI tools. ## Frequently asked questions ### What does the Ethical AI Use Under the ABA Model Rules course cover? AI touches at least six Model Rules and most firm policies address one. This course works rule by rule: competence under 1.1, confidentiality under 1.6, supervision under 5.1 and 5.3, fees under 1.5, communication under 1.4, and the unauthorized practice question under 5.5 for client-facing agents. It runs 5 hours across 8 modules across 8 modules, at foundational level, and closes with a capstone: Firm AI policy mapped rule by rule. ### Who should take Ethical AI Use Under the ABA Model Rules? It is written for Ethics and risk counsel, Managing partners and general counsel of the firm, Practice group leaders, Professional responsibility committee members. Prerequisites: Licensed attorney; Familiarity with your jurisdiction's rules. ### Can we run this course on our own infrastructure? Yes. ibl.ai is model-agnostic and deploy-anywhere — cloud, private VPC, on-premise, or fully air-gapped — and you own all the code and the data. Cohort data, submissions, and any material learners upload stay inside your perimeter, which matters for legal teams that cannot send work to a public AI tool. ### How do we get access to Ethical AI Use Under the ABA Model Rules? Request access and we will set it up for your cohort — hosted by ibl.ai, or running against your own deployment. Tell us the group size and timing you need, and whether it should run inside your own perimeter. ### How much does AI training for legal cost on ibl.ai? There is no per-seat pricing — you pay for usage or self-host and pay only for the infrastructure, so a 5,000-person rollout does not cost 5,000 licences. 1.6M+ users across 400+ organizations run the platform this way, including NVIDIA, MIT, and Syracuse University. ## More Legal courses - [AI and Attorney-Client Privilege: The Architecture Question](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/course/ai-and-attorney-client-privilege): Whether sending client material to a third-party AI service waives privilege — the confidentiality analysis, the reasonable-efforts standard, and the deployment that avoids the question. - [Verifying AI Legal Research: Never Cite a Hallucination](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/course/verifying-ai-legal-research): A verification protocol for AI-assisted research — why fabricated citations happen, how to catch them every time, and the supervision structure that makes it non-optional. - [Contract Review with AI: Redlining, Risk, and Playbooks](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/course/contract-review-with-ai): Encode your firm's negotiating positions into an AI review workflow — clause extraction, deviation detection, risk scoring, and where a partner still reads every word. - [AI in eDiscovery: TAR, Privilege Screening, and Defensibility](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/course/ai-in-ediscovery): Use AI across the discovery lifecycle while keeping the process defensible — technology-assisted review, privilege screening, validation, and the meet-and-confer record. - [Client Intake and Conflicts Checking with AI](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/course/client-intake-conflicts-with-ai): Faster intake without a missed conflict — entity resolution across a matter history, adverse party detection, and why the conflicts decision stays human. - [Brief Drafting with AI: Structure, Citation, and Review](https://ibl.ai/solutions/legal/course/brief-drafting-with-ai): Where AI genuinely accelerates motion practice — outlining, fact-section assembly, authority organization — and the review gates that keep a filing safe.