SB 574 was signed on September 30, 2026 and takes effect on January 1, 2027. Here is what the enacted text says, what it does not say, and the practical setup work — tools, access, verification, disclosure and training — that helps your attorneys meet it.
Enacted: Approved by the Governor and filed with the Secretary of State on September 30, 2026. It is Chapter 858, Statutes of 2026.
Takes effect: SB 574 is a non-urgency statute with no delayed operative date, so under Government Code section 9600(a) it takes effect on January 1, 2027.
The roughly three months in between are the useful part: enough time to find out which AI tools and features your people actually use, check who can see what goes into them, and put verification and disclosure steps into the workflows that produce court filings.
General information about the enacted text, not legal advice. Your attorneys decide how the law applies to your practice; we help with the technical setup and training around those decisions.
Summarized from the chaptered bill text. The quoted lines are the statute's own words; follow the section label to read each one in full.
Bus. & Prof. Code § 6068.1(a)(1)–(2) · SEC. 1 of the bill
Nothing in the section reduces the attorney's duty of reasonable competence and diligence, and an attorney may not hand the practice of law over to generative AI.
An attorney shall not delegate the practice of law to generative artificial intelligence.
Bus. & Prof. Code § 6068.1(a)(3)(A) · SEC. 1 of the bill
Confidential, personal identifying and other nonpublic information may not go into a generative AI system unless access to those inputs is restricted to the attorney and people the attorney has authorized who are bound to protect confidentiality. Subdivision (b)(2) lists what counts as personal identifying information — for example dates of birth, financial and medical information, account numbers, and addresses and phone numbers of parties, victims, witnesses and court personnel.
Not enter confidential, personal identifying, and other nonpublic information into a generative artificial intelligence system for which access … is not restricted to the attorney and persons authorized by the attorney under obligations to protect the confidentiality of the information.
Bus. & Prof. Code § 6068.1(a)(3)(B) · SEC. 1 of the bill
Attorneys must take reasonable steps to verify the accuracy of AI output — including all case and statutory citations — and to correct erroneous or hallucinated output in any material they use.
Verify the accuracy of generative artificial intelligence outputs, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of all case and statutory citations.
Bus. & Prof. Code § 6068.1(a)(3)(C) · SEC. 1 of the bill
For documents submitted to a court, the attorney must disclose the use of generative AI. For content provided to the public, the attorney must consider whether to disclose. One is a requirement; the other is a decision the attorney has to make and should be able to show was made.
Disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence to the court for all documents submitted to the court and consider whether to disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence if it is used to create content provided to the public.
Code Civ. Proc. § 128.7(b)(2)(A) and (g) · SEC. 3 of the bill
A brief, pleading, motion or other paper filed in court may not contain any citation the responsible attorney has not personally verified — whether or not AI produced it. Section 128.7 keeps its own notice-and-sanctions procedure, and subdivision (g) still excludes disclosures and discovery requests, responses, objections and motions.
A brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court shall not contain any citations that an attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally verified, including any citation provided by generative artificial intelligence.
Narrower provisions
Code websites typically show the amended and new sections after they take effect; until then, the chaptered bill is the authoritative text.
Good configuration, documented access settings and trained staff support your attorneys' responsibilities. They do not guarantee compliance, and no website, consultant or product setting can guarantee that privilege or confidentiality is preserved in a particular matter. Those remain legal judgments for the responsible attorney, made on the facts and the agreements that actually apply.
What we can promise is the work itself: an accurate inventory, settings checked against the agreement you signed, workflows that make verification and disclosure steps hard to skip, and training that matches how your firm really works.
This isn't a compliance score or a legal verdict. It shows which setup areas you have covered and which ones need a closer look. Answers stay in your browser — nothing is sent or stored, and there is nothing to upload.
A fictional example to show the kind of change involved. Your workflow, tools and rules will differ.
Section 6068.1(a)(3)(A) asks whether access to what an attorney inputs is restricted to the attorney and authorized people bound to confidentiality. Any of the three approaches can be part of the answer. None of them settles it automatically.
Business and enterprise plans differ by product, feature and agreement. We check the agreement that actually applies, the admin settings, and features that change the data path — web search, connectors, file stores, agents and support access — and record what we verified and when.
Running a model on firm hardware can keep prompts off outside servers. It doesn't remove everything else: runtime telemetry, update channels, remote support, backups, connectors and software licenses still need to be examined and set up.
Most firms end up with a mix: a governed commercial plan for general work, the research platform for authority, and sometimes a local model for particular matters or clients. The work is making sure each kind of information has an approved home that people can actually find.
See AI & LLM Adoption for commercial plans and Private & Local AI for on-premises options, including what a local setup still needs.
Each path stands on its own. Scope, fees and what's included are confirmed in writing before work starts.
Our training is not MCLE-accredited unless a specific course says so in writing. The State Bar publishes its own generative AI guidance and training toolkit, which we reference with attribution.
Sources last checked . Next scheduled review: before , and whenever the State Bar or Judicial Council publishes related guidance.
Firm Upgrade is a technology consultancy, not a law firm, and is not affiliated with the State Bar of California, the Legislature or the Judicial Council. This page is general information and isn't legal advice.
Start with an assessment of the AI tools your firm actually uses — then implement and train around what it finds.