The SRA professional duties and using AI in legal practice

The SRA professional duties and using AI in legal practice is a topic that generates more anxiety than it probably should among transactional solicitors. The SRA's framework is principles-based, which means that the existing duties around competence, supervision and confidentiality already cover AI use. There is no separate regulatory regime for AI tools; the existing obligations apply.

Competence and supervision

The SRA Code of Conduct requires solicitors to maintain their competence and to ensure that work they supervise meets the required standard. In the context of AI-assisted drafting, this means that a solicitor who uses an AI tool to produce a first draft remains responsible for reviewing that draft and ensuring it is legally accurate, appropriately structured and suitable for the client's needs. The tool assists the process; the solicitor retains the professional obligation.

This is not a new principle. The same obligation applies when a solicitor uses a precedent, delegates drafting to a junior or uses any other resource to produce work. AI does not change the standard; it changes the means of production.

Client confidentiality and data handling

The more significant compliance question is how client information is handled when it is processed by an AI tool. The SRA's confidentiality obligations require solicitors to keep client information confidential and to maintain appropriate security for that information. Passing client data to an AI tool that processes it outside the firm's control, uses it to train a general model or shares it with other users would raise clear compliance concerns.

The question to ask of any AI tool in a legal context is: where does the data go, who can access it and how is it used? A tool that processes client information within a secure, firm-specific environment with clear data residency and a contractual commitment that data is not used for external training is in a very different position to a general-purpose consumer AI product.

Documenting the approach

Firms that can demonstrate a considered and documented approach to AI use, including how tools are selected, how data is handled, how outputs are supervised and how training is provided to fee earners, are in a stronger position in any SRA engagement around AI use. Scriptum is built with these considerations in mind. To understand the specifics of our data handling and security architecture, book a demo and we can take you through the detail.