What does New York's AI rule require?
Since June 1, 2026, New York's court rule on AI (22 NYCRR Part 161) allows attorneys and self-represented parties to use AI tools to prepare court papers. No disclosure is required. The person who signs the paper is still fully responsible for it, and that means confirming there are no made-up cases, statutes, quotes, or facts. Individual judges can add stricter rules for their own courtrooms.
What changed in New York over the last year?
New York moved in two steps, about eight months apart.
- October 10, 2025: The New York State Unified Court System released an interim AI policy for its own judges and staff. It limited them to approved tools and barred them from putting confidential information into public AI programs.
- June 1, 2026: Part 161 took effect for everyone filing papers. It ties AI use back to rules lawyers already follow, including the frivolous conduct rule (22 NYCRR 130-1.1) and Rule 3.3 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct on candor to the court. It also includes a model rule that individual courts may adopt.
The New York State Bar Association summary is a good plain read if you want the details. The short version: New York chose accountability over bans. Use the tool if you like. Your signature means you checked.
Are courts actually sanctioning family law filings?
Yes, and the cases are piling up. A few recent ones:
- Mendel S. v. Faigy S. (Kings County Family Court, 2026): In a child support objection, the court found 11 of 16 citations were AI fabrications and the rest were miscited. The attorney was sanctioned under the frivolous conduct rule.
- Matter of Julien v. Arthur (Appellate Division, Second Department, May 2026): A father representing himself used AI to write his appellate brief in a family matter. It cited a case that does not exist. The court fined him and made clear that self-represented parties are held to the same standard.
- Shahid v. Esaam (Georgia Court of Appeals, June 2025): In a divorce case, the trial court signed an order that relied on cases that do not exist. The appeals court vacated the order, sent the case back, and fined the husband's attorney $2,500, the most its rules allowed.
- Torres Campos v. Munoz (California Court of Appeal, 2026): The attorney was sanctioned $5,000 after citing fictional cases and then continuing to defend them after being told they were fake.
The fines are small. The bigger cost lands on the family. When an order gets vacated, a custody or support question goes back to square one, and a parent and their kids wait months longer for an answer.
Why are family and estate planning matters higher risk?
Family courts move on tight timelines, and the people waiting on decisions are often children. One bad citation can push back a hearing that a parent has been waiting on for months.
Estate planning carries its own trap. Rules on how a will or trust must be signed and witnessed differ from state to state, and general AI tools freely blend them. A draft that reads perfectly can still follow the wrong state's law.
Both practice areas also handle some of the most sensitive information a client will ever share: financial statements, medical history, and details about their kids. The ABA's Formal Opinion 512 (July 2024) says lawyers using AI must still meet their duties of competence, confidentiality, client communication, candor to the court, supervision, and reasonable fees. Typing a client's financial affidavit into a free public chatbot is hard to square with that list.
What should a small firm put in place this month?
You do not need an IT department for this. Most two to five attorney firms can set it up in an afternoon.
- Write a one-page AI policy. List which tools are approved and what each one may be used for.
- Keep confidential client information out of public AI tools. If a tool trains on what you type, it does not get client data.
- Check every citation in an official source. Pull the actual case or statute and read the part you are citing. A summary from the same AI tool does not count.
- Supervise everyone who uses AI on a file. Paralegals and associates fall under your supervisory duties (Rules 5.1 and 5.3).
- Check your opponent's citations too. The ABA Journal reported this month that judges are increasingly faulting lawyers who miss fake citations in the other side's papers.
- Fix mistakes fast. If you find an error after filing, correct it right away. Courts have been far harder on lawyers who defended a bad citation than on those who owned it.
Does the same duty apply to your website and marketing?
This is the part most firms miss. The rules on attorney advertising (Rule 7.1 in New York and in the ABA Model Rules) bar false or misleading statements about a lawyer's services. Those rules apply whether a person or a chatbot wrote the words.
Plenty of firm websites now run AI-written blog posts that nobody fact-checked. We see the same problems the courts are seeing: the wrong state's rule, a made-up statistic, a "landmark case" that was never decided.
Here is why that matters more every month. Tools like ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, and Perplexity read law firm websites and repeat what they find when someone asks, "How does child support work in New York?" If your page is wrong, the AI may repeat your mistake with your firm's name attached. If your page is accurate, clear, and well sourced, it has a better chance of being the one these tools quote.
That is how we write content for our clients at Up And Social. Every post cites real sources, gets a human fact check, and goes to the attorney for approval before it goes live. It takes longer than pressing a button, and it is the version that holds up when a prospect, a judge, or an AI tool reads it. You can see how we approach this for family law firms and estate planning firms.
What this comes down to
AI is a fast way to get a first draft. Your name still goes on the final one, in court and online. Firms that build a simple checking habit now will spend less time explaining mistakes later.
This article is general information for law firm owners. It is not legal or ethics advice. Check the rules in your state and any part rules in the courts where you practice.