Formal Opinion 512 did something more useful than announcing new rules: it declined to. Its central move is that generative AI raises no novel category of ethical obligation, because competence, confidentiality, communication, candour to tribunals, supervision and reasonable fees already reach every question a firm is likely to have. That framing has proved durable, and most state guidance since has followed it rather than departed from it.
Four threads matter most in practice. Competence now includes a reasonable understanding of the benefits and risks of tools a lawyer uses — not technical expertise, but enough to know how they fail. Confidentiality requires evaluating whether inputting client information into a tool constitutes disclosure, which turns on the specific terms governing that tool rather than a general answer. Communication may require telling clients about AI use, depending on the engagement and the materiality. And on fees, the opinion is unusually direct: a lawyer may not bill for time not spent, so efficiency gained through AI cannot be billed as though the hours were worked, and the cost of the tool itself may only be passed to a client under the ordinary rules on expenses.
The limit to note is jurisdictional. This is an ABA opinion, which binds nobody by itself; what governs a lawyer is their own jurisdiction's rules and guidance. A number of states have issued opinions that follow 512 closely and several depart from it in specific respects. Read it as the map, then read your own state.
State opinions diverge on client disclosure in particular — some read the communication duty as requiring notice of material AI use, others treat it as ordinarily unnecessary where the lawyer remains responsible for the work. There is also live disagreement about how much a lawyer must understand: 512 sets a reasonable-understanding standard, and commentators differ sharply on whether that is satisfied by knowing that a tool can hallucinate or requires something closer to understanding why. The practical answer is that the more your firm relies on a tool, the more the standard asks of you.