California’s Legislature finished Senate Bill 574 on August 31 and sent it to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Assembly passed it 75-0. The Senate concurred in the Assembly amendments 39-0. Newsom’s office had not said by September 1 whether he will sign. He has until September 30.
The measure would add section 6068.1 to the Business and Professions Code and amend Code of Civil Procedure section 128.7, California’s filing-certification statute. It also adds duties for judicial officers and arbitrators. Violations of the attorney rules would sit with the State Bar.
What the new section actually says
Section 6068.1 starts by saying it does not cancel the existing duty of competence and diligence. Then it draws a hard line: “An attorney shall not delegate the practice of law to generative artificial intelligence.”
A lawyer who uses generative AI in practice would have to do three things.
Do not put confidential, personal identifying, or other nonpublic information into a generative AI system unless access to that input is limited to the lawyer and people the lawyer authorizes under confidentiality obligations. Consumer ChatGPT with default training on is the obvious target. An enterprise instance with a no-training contract and access limited to the firm can fit the exception. A public model with no access control does not.
Take reasonable steps to verify the accuracy of the output, including every case and statutory citation, and correct erroneous or hallucinated material before using it.
Disclose generative AI use to the court for every document submitted. The bill also tells lawyers to consider disclosing AI use when the content is for the public.
Generative AI is defined as a system that produces synthetic text, images, video, or audio that copies the structure of its training data. That is the statutory box. Ordinary search, spellcheck, and most e-discovery ranking tools sit outside it unless they generate new synthetic content of that kind.
Citations get a personal-read rule
The 128.7 amendment is the piece most likely to show up in a sanctions motion. A brief, pleading, motion, or other paper filed in court could not contain citations the responsible attorney has not personally verified, including citations that came from a model.
That is stricter than “have someone on the team check Westlaw.” Firms that split research among associates and staff would need a named lawyer who actually opened the authorities. Earlier drafts and commentary flagged that this raises the bar above the usual division of labor. The enacted text Newsom will see is the version that passed after four Assembly amendments since June.
Arbitrators could not hand any part of decision-making to a generative AI tool. They would remain responsible for the award even if a model touched a draft. Judicial officers in civil and criminal matters would have disclosure duties when they or anyone involved in researching or drafting an order or finding relied on generative AI.
This is statute, not only bar guidance
The State Bar’s Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct issued practical guidance in November 2023 and replaced it in 2026 after the California Supreme Court asked the Bar to address agentic systems. That guidance already said: keep confidences out of open tools, verify output, bill actual time, supervise staff, and do not outsource candor to a model.
COPRAC also proposed comment amendments to Rules 1.1, 1.4, 1.6, 3.3, 5.1, and 5.3. Those still need the Supreme Court of California. SB 574 does not wait on that track. If Newsom signs, the duties live in the Business and Professions Code and the Code of Civil Procedure whether or not the Rules of Professional Conduct comments are adopted.
A separate bill, AB 1651, already became Chapter 116 of 2026. It makes the State Bar disclose AI-generated content used to develop or administer the bar exam and on the cover of study materials the Bar publishes or endorses. That law takes effect January 1, 2028, and only covers content the Bar itself directed. It is not SB 574. Do not conflate exam labeling with courtroom duties.
Why Umberg wrote a statute instead of waiting for more opinions
Judges have sanctioned lawyers for invented cases since Mata v. Avianca in 2023. California’s own discipline docket has caught up. In April 2026 the Los Angeles Times reported State Bar charges against Omid Emile Khalifeh and Steven Thomas Romeyn over AI-related fake or irrelevant citations, and a stipulated 30-day suspension plus probation for Sepideh Ardestani after a March 2025 federal filing with nonexistent cites. Khalifeh was also accused of ignoring a January 28, 2025 standing order that already required generative-AI disclosure in that court.
Standing orders and ethics opinions already exist. They are uneven. Umberg’s bill makes verification, disclosure, and the confidentiality wall statewide and enforceable as statutory duties, not only as local judge preference.
The bill does not ban legal AI. It bans treating the model as the lawyer. Drafting help is allowed if a human checks the cites, fixes the inventions, keeps client facts out of open systems, and tells the court the tool was used.
What firms should change before September 30
If Newsom signs, the operational work is immediate even if the operative date needs a close read of the enrolled text.
Inventory every generative tool that touches client work. Split public models from contracted enterprise instances. Turn off training on firm inputs. Stop pasting discovery, medical records, or deal terms into tools that other customers or the vendor can see.
Build a citation protocol that produces a lawyer who can swear they personally verified each authority in a 128.7 paper. Sampling an associate’s research memo is not the same as that lawyer opening the reporter.
Add a court-disclosure line to every filing checklist. Some federal and state judges already require it. SB 574 would make it the default for documents submitted to California courts.
Arbitrators and ADR shops need a written rule that the award is human. Using a model to summarize exhibits is different from letting it pick the result.
State Bar guidance already warned against billing hours the model erased and against charging the client for the lawyer’s own learning curve. SB 574 does not rewrite Rule 1.5, but a sanctions motion that starts with fake cites will not stop at the caption page.
Newsom can still veto. Until he acts, SB 574 is enrolled legislation, not law. The conduct it describes is already how California courts and the Bar have been treating hallucinated filings. The statute would give them a numbered section to cite.