Is there an ethics opinion on using AI for law firm billing or collections?

No. As of early September 2026 there is no ethics opinion in any US jurisdiction addressing AI or software used for legal billing, accounts receivable, or collections. ABA Formal Opinion 512 and every state opinion following it address generative AI used for legal work, not law firm business or administrative systems.

Can I bill a client for time spent using AI?

Yes, for time actually spent — including drafting and refining prompts and reviewing output for accuracy. You may not bill hours you did not work, and you may not bill time spent learning a tool you will use generally, unless the client specifically requested that tool and agreed in advance.

Can I charge a client for my AI subscription?

A general-purpose subscription is overhead under California's 2026 guidance and should be absorbed in your fee rather than charged separately. A matter-specific, per-use cost may be billed at actual out-of-pocket cost, without markup, provided the basis is disclosed in advance.

Does California allow a flat fee to stay the same when AI makes the work faster?

The authorities disagree. ABA Formal Opinion 512 suggests an unchanged flat fee may be unreasonable; Virginia LEO 1901, approved by the Supreme Court of Virginia in November 2025, holds it is not per se unreasonable. California's 2026 guidance removed the flat prohibition its 2023 edition contained and expressly contemplates flat fees that price in AI efficiency. It is unsettled.

Do I have to tell my client I am using AI?

There is no blanket California rule requiring it. Section 6148 requires the basis of compensation in writing, and the 2026 guidance says fee agreements should state the extent to which generative AI factors into your rates. A proposed amendment to Rule 1.4 is pending as of September 2026.

Are my billing records confidential?

Yes. Rule 1.6 and Business and Professions Code section 6068(e) protect information relating to the representation, and that category is defined by content rather than by which system stores it. In family law, time-entry narratives frequently contain the most sensitive facts in the matter.

Can I give unpaid invoices to a collection agency?

Under California Lawyers Association Formal Opinion 2022-1, confidential information may be used only to the extent necessary to establish the fee claim, and the opinion expressly prohibits using client banking and asset information learned in the representation to direct a collection agent. D.C. Opinion 298 prohibits outright sale of receivables and limits disclosure to the minimum necessary to collect the debt.

Can a Law Firm Use AI on Client Billing Data Without Breaching Confidentiality?

Last checked 8 September 2026. Every authority cited below is linked. Nothing here is legal advice.

Short answer. There is no ethics opinion, in any US jurisdiction, that addresses AI or software used for legal billing, accounts receivable, or collections. We looked, and we say below exactly how we looked. What governs instead is a set of older rules that were written for other technology and transfer cleanly: your billing records are confidential information, a vendor touching them requires the same diligence as a vendor touching your case files, an automated follow-up sequence is a nonlawyer assistant you are required to supervise, and — in California specifically — you may use what you learned in the representation to prove a fee is owed, but not to collect it.

That last one surprises most family law attorneys, so it is worth stating twice.

The Gap, Stated Precisely

ABA Formal Opinion 512 (29 July 2024) is the most-cited guidance on lawyers and generative AI. It runs to competence, confidentiality, communication, supervision, meritorious contentions, candour and fees.

It does not address law firm business or administrative software at all. No discussion of billing systems, accounts receivable, invoicing, collections, or payment processing. Its scope is generative AI used for legal work.

Every state opinion that followed keeps the same scope: D.C. Opinion 388 (April 2024), Florida Opinion 24-1 (19 January 2024), Pennsylvania/Philadelphia Joint Formal Opinion 2024-200 (22 May 2024), Oregon Formal Opinion 2025-205 (February 2025), Texas Opinion 705 (February 2025), Alaska Opinion 2025-1 (adopted 23 April 2025), Virginia LEO 1901 (approved by the Supreme Court of Virginia 24 November 2025). California's own Practical Guidance, in its 2026 edition, is likewise about the practice of law.

How we checked. Three independent passes: a direct read of Opinion 512's scope; targeted searches for AI-related billing or fee discipline in any jurisdiction, which returned only filing-based sanctions; and targeted searches for confidentiality discipline arising from entering client data into a consumer AI tool, which returned ethics guidance and law-firm client alerts but not one disciplinary decision.

If you find an opinion we missed, we would like to know — the page will be corrected and the correction dated.

For the workflow-level version of this question — which AI billing patterns hold up in practice — see How Family Law Firms Are Using AI for Billing Narratives (Without Ethics Violations).

Why the Absence Is Not Reassuring

As of early September 2026, the Charlotin AI Hallucination Cases database — the most widely cited tracker of its kind, maintained by researcher Damien Charlotin and updated close to daily — records more than 2,000 decisions worldwide in which a court found that a party relied on hallucinated material, spanning family law, criminal defense, personal injury, immigration, and virtually every other practice area. (One entry from the family law docket: In re Marriage of Haibt, Colorado Court of Appeals.)

Zero of them concern the business side of a practice.

That asymmetry has a structural explanation, and it is worth understanding before drawing any comfort from it.

A fabricated citation is self-detecting. Opposing counsel looks the case up. It does not exist. They have every incentive to expose it, and a judge has the authority to memorialise it. The result is a published opinion, a database entry, and eventually a CLE slide. The adversary system is an almost perfect detection mechanism for that particular failure.

A confidentiality breach in your billing data has no adversary. If a firm pastes a client's schedule of assets into a consumer chatbot, there is no opposing party looking for it, no judge to write it down, and frequently no way the client ever learns it happened. Bar investigations are confidential until formal charges issue. Fee disputes resolve in arbitration, which is not public.

So the zero is a statement about the reported record, not about the world. It is exactly what you would observe whether the risk is genuinely small or simply invisible. We are not claiming these breaches are common — nobody knows, and anybody who tells you otherwise is guessing. We are claiming that the evidence we have could not show it either way.

Your Billing File Is Your Case File

In most practice areas a billing record is a dull list of tasks. In family law it is a chronology of the client's private life. Consider the kind of entry every firm produces:

0.4  Telephone conference with client re: results of custody evaluation
1.2  Review of respondent's account statements; analysis of transfers to third party
0.3  Correspondence with client re: safety planning and address confidentiality
0.6  Conference with client regarding treatment records and their discoverability

The narrative is the sensitive part. The number beside it is the least interesting thing on the line.

Rule 1.6 and Business and Professions Code section 6068(e) protect information "relating to the representation." That category is defined by content, not by which system the information happens to sit in. Which means every question a firm would ask about a vendor touching its case files is a question it has to ask about a vendor touching its billing data — and in our experience most firms ask the first set and none of the second.

The California Rule Most Firms Have Not Read

California Lawyers Association Formal Opinion No. 2022-1 (22 April 2022) is the closest California authority to the question, and it is narrow in a way that matters.

"While an attorney is permitted to use or disclose client confidential information to establish a claim for unpaid fees against a former client, an attorney may do so only to the extent necessary to establish the claim. Once the claim is established, the reason for the exception to confidentiality is satisfied."

And on third parties, expressly, the attorney

"cannot use the confidential knowledge of Client's banking and asset information to specifically target post-judgment discovery at those assets or direct a collection agent or investigator."

The opinion reads Evidence Code section 958 as an exception that exists to let a lawyer prove a claim — and holds that once judgment is entered, section 958 no longer permits using confidential information to enforce it.

What that means in a dissolution. You spent the matter assembling a complete picture of your client's accounts, property and income. It is the best asset schedule anyone will ever build about that person, and you built it lawfully. You cannot point it at your own bill.

Whether a billing platform that ingests matter data and drives payment follow-up falls inside that prohibition has not been decided anywhere. That is the open question, and it is the reason the diligence questions further down are worth asking.

Handing Receivables to Someone Else

D.C. Bar Ethics Opinion 298 (May 2000) is the clearest treatment of the underlying problem, and it was written for a collection agency with a telephone and a filing cabinet. The principles transfer:

Outright sale of client receivables to a collection agency is not permitted.
Assignment is permissible only where "the lawyer retains sufficient control over the collection process (including any fee litigation that may arise) to satisfy her ethical responsibilities."
Disclosure "should be limited to the minimal information necessary to collect the debt unless client consent is obtained." Name, address and amount owed are generally disclosable; detailed billing records generally are not.

What has changed since 2000 is not the principle. It is that a modern automated system handles far more data with far less lawyer attention per contact.

And supervision. An automated payment-reminder sequence is a nonlawyer assistant that contacts your clients without asking you first. Rules 5.1 and 5.3 apply to it. Opinion 512 puts the managerial duty plainly: managing lawyers "must establish clear policies regarding the law firm's permissible use" of these tools, and supervisory lawyers must make reasonable efforts to ensure compliance. The proposed 2026 amendments to the California Rules of Professional Conduct would make an AI governance policy an express obligation under 5.1 and 5.3.

For the operational playbook this connects to, see Aparti's family law collections playbook and Trust Account Replenishment Triggers That Reduce AR by 40%.

Can I Bill a Client for Time I Spent Using AI?

This is the second question people arrive with, and here the authorities are much richer. Three categories.

Settled — Every Authority Agrees

Point	Detail
Hourly means actual hours	Lawyers "who bill clients an hourly rate for time spent on a matter must bill for their actual time" (ABA Op. 512). Efficiency does not create billable hours.
Prompting and reviewing is billable	Opinion 512's own example: fifteen minutes entering information into the tool is billable, as is the time reviewing the output for accuracy and completeness.
Learning the tool is not	"Lawyers may not charge clients for time necessitated by their own inexperience." A lawyer "may not charge a client to learn about how to use a GAI tool or service that the lawyer will regularly use" (ABA Op. 512). Narrow exception: the client requested that specific tool and you agreed in advance.
General subscriptions are overhead	California's 2026 guidance: subscription fees for tools providing "general office functionality" "typically constitute overhead expenses" and "should be absorbed within the lawyer's fee rather than charged separately to clients."
Matter-specific per-use costs may be billed at cost	No markup absent client agreement. Opinion 512 applies Opinion 93-379's direct-cost-plus-allocation rule.
Reused work product does not re-earn hours	"A lawyer who is able to reuse old work product has not re-earned the hours previously billed" (ABA Op. 93-379). A prompt library is reused work product.

The rule underneath all of this is over thirty years old, and it already named the technology of its own era:

"the lawyer's stock in trade is the sale of legal services, not photocopy paper, tuna fish sandwiches, computer time or messenger services."

— ABA Formal Opinion 93-379 (6 December 1993), quoted in ABA Formal Opinion 512

Contested — Do Not Let Anyone Tell You This Is Settled

If a firm charges a flat fee and AI makes the work faster, may it keep charging the same flat fee?

ABA Formal Opinion 512 says probably not: "it may be unreasonable under Rule 1.5 for the lawyer to charge the same flat fee when using the GAI tool as when not using it."
Virginia LEO 1901, approved by the Supreme Court of Virginia on 24 November 2025, says the opposite: "It is not per se unreasonable for a lawyer to charge the same non-hourly fee for work done with the assistance of AI as work done without the use of AI."

Virginia's is a court-approved opinion rather than a committee advisory, which makes it a high-ranking authority on the question. The ABA's is the one everybody quotes. Neither binds California.

What California Actually Did in May 2026

The 2026 edition of the State Bar's Practical Guidance for the Use of Generative AI in the Practice of Law was approved by the Board of Trustees on 14 May 2026 and states that it replaces the 2023 version.

The 2023 edition contained a flat prohibition: "A lawyer must not charge hourly fees for the time saved by using generative AI."

That sentence does not appear in the 2026 edition. In its place, the fee section — headed "Charging for Work Produced by Generative AI and Generative AI Costs," citing Rule 1.5 and Business and Professions Code sections 6147–6148 — says hourly billing must reflect time actually spent, and adds that lawyers "may consider using alternative billing structures, such as flat fees, for more predictable assignments," building "the time savings created by AI use into their competitive rates for such assignments."

California moved from the ABA's position toward Virginia's. As far as we can tell, it was not announced.

The California Exposure Is Section 6148, Not Rule 1.5

Most national coverage of this topic imports the Model Rule vocabulary. California's rule is different, and the difference matters.

Rule 1.5(a): "A lawyer shall not make an agreement for, charge, or collect an unconscionable or illegal fee." Not "unreasonable" — a materially higher bar for discipline. Unconscionability is judged "on the basis of all the facts and circumstances existing at the time the agreement is entered into," and the factors include "the relative sophistication of the lawyer and the client," which has no Model Rule counterpart and which cuts hardest in a practice area where the client is an individual in the worst year of their life.

So a California family law firm billing AI-assisted work is very unlikely to face a Rule 1.5 discipline case. What it faces is Business and Professions Code section 6148:

A written fee agreement is required wherever total expense to the client, including fees, will exceed $1,000 — effectively every contested matter.
It must state "any basis of compensation," the general nature of the services, and the respective responsibilities of attorney and client.
Non-compliance renders the agreement "voidable at the option of the client, and the attorney shall, upon the agreement being voided, be entitled to collect a reasonable fee."

Now combine that with the 2026 guidance, which says fee agreements "should clearly communicate how fees and costs are calculated and the extent to which generative AI factors into the lawyer's rates."

A firm that uses AI and whose engagement letter is silent about it does not have a Rule 1.5 problem. It has a section 6148 problem. And the consequence is not a bar complaint that will probably never arrive — it is a client in a fee dispute voiding the agreement and leaving the firm on quantum meruit. That happens quietly, in fee arbitration, all the time.

The fix is one paragraph.

Five Questions to Ask Any Vendor Touching Your Billing Data

Ask us these too. If a vendor cannot answer all five in writing, that is the answer.

Where does my data go, and who can read it? Ask for the actual terms of use and the retention policy. Opinion 512 is explicit that "merely adding general, boiler-plate provisions to engagement letters purporting to authorize the lawyer to use GAI is not sufficient."
Is my data used to train anything? Get it in writing. "We do not train on customer data" is a contractual commitment, not a marketing line, and belongs in the agreement.
What can the system send without a human approving it? This is a Rule 5.3 question. If the answer is "anything on a schedule," client communication has been delegated to something nobody reviews.
Can it reach a represented party, or a client at a confidential or shielded address? Most vendors have never been asked. Watching one work out the answer in real time is informative.
What happens to the data when I leave? Deletion, export format, and how long backups persist. Rule 1.15(d)(5) requires trust records to be preserved for five years after final distribution.

What to Do This Week

Read your engagement letter and ask whether it says anything about how fees are computed when AI is involved. If it is silent, that is the section 6148 exposure above.
Add the AI cost and rate language. One paragraph.
Decide, in writing, which tools your firm permits — and tell your staff. In Clio's 2025 survey, 53% of respondents said their firm had no AI policy or they were unaware of one.
Check whether any tool you use retains or trains on what you put into it.
Stop billing ramp-up time on a tool you will use generally.

For the client-side and pricing-side counterparts to this piece, see When Clients Don't Pay: Navigating the Family Law AR Crisis and How to Raise Family Law Retainers Without Losing Clients.

Aparti builds software for family law firms, which makes us an interested party on this subject. Every claim above carries a citation so that you can check it rather than take our word for it. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it and date the correction.

Sources: ABA Formal Opinion 512 · ABA Formal Opinion 93-379 · California Practical Guidance on Generative AI, 2026 ed. · California Rules of Professional Conduct · CLA Formal Opinion 2022-1 · D.C. Bar Opinion 298 · Virginia LEO 1901 · AI Hallucination Cases database. All checked 8 September 2026.