By Kim Xi Harris Founder & Platform Architect, Lex Arca™ Legal Vault | Calculate your firm’s billing leakage | legalvault@lex-arca.com
According to Clio’s 2026 Legal Trends Report for Solo and Small Law Firms (May 2026, https://www.clio.com/about/press/2026-solo-small-firm-report/), 71% of solo practitioners and 75% of small firms are now using AI to complete legal work — yet fewer than 33% have seen any revenue increase from it, compared to nearly 60% of enterprise firms. The gap between AI adoption and AI compliance is not a policy problem. It is an architecture problem.
Effective June 1, 2026, Part 161 of the Rules of the Chief Administrator of the Courts requires every attorney who signs a paper submitted to a New York court to independently certify that it contains no fabricated cases, statutes, or other AI-generated material — without requiring them to disclose that AI was used at all. New York chose accountability over paperwork, and that choice tells attorneys exactly where their actual exposure sits.
What Does Part 161 Actually Require?
Part 161 applies to every court in the Unified Court System, civil and criminal alike. It permits attorneys and parties to use AI tools in preparing pleadings, briefs, affidavits, and other papers submitted to the court, and it does not require a disclosure statement saying AI was used. What it requires instead is narrower and more consequential: by signing the paper, the attorney certifies they have “carefully review[ed] the paper and independently ensure[d]” that it contains no fabricated or fictitious cases, statutes, or other material — language the rule ties directly to existing duty-of-candor obligations under 22 NYCRR 130-1.1 and Rule 3.3 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct.
Individual judges retain discretion to adopt the model rule, write something stricter, or impose no additional local requirement at all. But the statewide policy is now in place regardless of which path a given judge takes, and it applies to the paper, not to materials offered or proffered as evidence — a distinction attorneys handling both filings and deposition-related work product should keep separate.
Why Doesn’t Part 161 Require AI Disclosure?
Because New York’s drafters concluded that disclosure was the wrong control point. An attorney can disclose AI use and still file fabricated content; an attorney can decline to disclose and still file clean work. The duties that actually govern a court filing — candor to the tribunal, no frivolous arguments, no false statements of fact — already existed before generative AI and apply regardless of what tool produced the first draft. Part 161 doesn’t create a new category of AI-specific paperwork. It removes any ambiguity about whether those existing duties apply to AI-assisted work, and answers: yes, in full, attached to the signature.
That is a meaningfully different posture than a disclosure-based rule would have been, and it is harder to satisfy with a checkbox. A disclosure requirement can be discharged by checking a box. A certification requirement can only be discharged by actually doing the review — and producing evidence of it if a court asks.
What Happens If an Attorney’s Filing Contains Fabricated Citations Anyway?
The rule states plainly that an attorney or party whose paper contains fabricated material “may be subject to sanction or other remedial action.” New York’s broader judiciary has already shown what that looks like in practice elsewhere this year: federal courts have disqualified attorneys, revoked pro hac vice admissions, and referred sanctioned lawyers to state disciplinary boards for exactly this conduct, all without a statewide rule like Part 161 in place. New York attorneys should read Part 161 as the floor, not the ceiling — individual judges are explicitly permitted to go further, and the rule itself signals that judicial patience with “I didn’t know my AI tool could hallucinate” has run out.
The practical risk is not limited to attorneys who knowingly cut corners. Part 161’s “independently ensure” standard reaches an attorney who genuinely believed their AI-assisted draft was clean, reviewed it once, and missed a fabricated citation buried in a string cite. Good faith and a quick read are not the same thing as the independent review the rule actually requires, and courts elsewhere have already declined to treat them as equivalent.
How Should New York Attorneys Document Compliance With Part 161?
By treating the certification requirement as something that needs evidence behind it, not just a sentence an attorney believes is true when they sign. New York is not alone in moving this direction. Florida’s Supreme Court adopted a statewide AI filing rule of its own (Case No. SC2026-0673 / AOSC26-12), effective June 15, 2026 — two weeks after Part 161 and superseding the prior circuit-level Florida Administrative Order 26-04 — extending a comparable certification duty across the entire state. Texas already requires attorneys to personally certify they reviewed every AI-assisted statement before filing. As of 2026, courts nationally have issued more than 300 standing orders addressing AI use in filings. The jurisdictions are converging on the same answer from different directions: the attorney’s signature carries the duty, and that duty needs to be demonstrable, not just sincere.
For New York attorneys, that means independently verifying every citation and quotation against the primary source before signing — and keeping a documented, verifiable record of that review, separate from memory or good faith. Roughly 75% of U.S. attorneys are now using AI in some part of their practice, but only about 25% have received formal AI ethics training, which is precisely the gap between adoption and the certification Part 161 now requires every signing attorney to make good on. Closing that gap is not a matter of reading more carefully under the same deadline pressure; it is a matter of having a record to point to when “independently ensure” stops being an aspiration and becomes the question a judge is actually asking.
From Kim’s Chair: The Questions I Would Have Asked
I came to this from the client’s chair, not the bench or the bar. When I read a rule like Part 161, I don’t read it as a compliance burden on attorneys. I read it as the first time a court system formally acknowledged what clients have never had a way to ask about directly: whether the person signing their filing actually checked it, or simply trusted the tool that produced it.
If I were in that courtroom as the client, here is what I would ask the room:
- How many attorneys in this room could explain, specifically, what “independently ensure” means in their own practice — beyond believing it themselves?
- If Part 161 didn’t require disclosure, how many clients in New York currently have any idea whether AI touched their filing at all?
- Why did it take a statewide rule for “review what you sign” to become an explicit, written standard, rather than an assumed one?
And if I were your client — sitting across from you before this filing went out — here is what I would have asked you:
- Did you personally verify every citation in this filing, or are you certifying based on trust in the process that produced it?
- If a judge asked you tomorrow to show what you reviewed before signing, could you produce something beyond your word?
- Do I have any way to know whether AI was involved in my filing, given that New York doesn’t require you to tell me?
These are not hostile questions. They are the questions that documentation answers — and the silence where documentation does not exist.
Key Takeaways
- Part 161, effective statewide in New York on June 1, 2026, requires attorneys to independently certify their filings contain no AI-fabricated material, without requiring disclosure that AI was used.
- The certification duty attaches to the attorney’s signature under existing candor obligations (22 NYCRR 130-1.1, Rule 3.3) — it does not create a new disclosure paperwork requirement.
- Attorneys should independently verify every citation and quotation against the primary source and maintain a documented record of that review, since the rule explicitly contemplates sanctions for filings that fall short.
- Lex Arca Legal Vault provides a documented, verifiable AI activity trail designed to support attorney compliance workflows under rules like Part 161.
- Calculate your firm’s billing leakage and get early access at https://calculator.lex-arca.com.
About the Author: Kim Xi Harris is the Founder and Platform Architect of Lex Arca™, an AI-native litigation intelligence and compliance platform for solo and small-firm attorneys. She is a Cornell Women’s Entrepreneur Program graduate, SBA Women in Business Champion Award recipient, WOSB certified, and holds five Google AI certifications. Calculate your firm’s billing leakage at https://calculator.lex-arca.com — or reach us at legalvault@lex-arca.com.
