A. Summary

Some courts now require lawyers to disclose or describe their use of generative AI, including:

The AI program used,
The portions of pleadings drafted by AI,
That the use of AI has not resulted in disclosure of confidential or proprietary information to unauthorized parties,
That generative AI or other AI has not been used, or
That content produced by generative AI has been verified by a human using traditional research methods.

These orders vary, but are generally triggered when generative AI is used to draft portions of pleadings filed with a court. Applications that were named include: “ChatGPT,” “Google Bard,” and “Harvey.ai.”

1. List of court orders concerning generative AI

This list demonstrates that judges are creating guidelines for using generative AI.

May 31, 2023	US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
June 2, 2023	US District Court for the Northern District of Texas
June 6, 2023	US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
June 8, 2023	US Court of International Trade
June 9, 2023	394th District Court of Texas
June 21, 2023	US Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas
June 22, 2023	US District Court for the District of Montana
June 23, 2023	Manitoba, Canada Court of King’s Bench
June 26, 2023	Supreme Court of Yukon
July 14, 2023	US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio
July 29, 2023	US District Court for the Southern District of New York
August 23, 2023	US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri
November 13, 2023	US District Court for the District of New Jersey
November 14, 2023	US District Court for the District of Hawaii
December 5, 2023	US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit (Proposed Rule Am.)

This list is provided for educational purposes. Make sure to check your local standing orders, rules, and other requirements.

2. Was CoCounsel named in these orders?

CoCounsel has not been named in court orders concerning the use of generative AI. While CoCounsl is not a general purpose chatbot, and Casetext and CoCounsel have not been specifically named in these court orders, CoCounsel does use GPT-4, OpenAI’s advanced large language model (LLM), and other, proprietary, LLM AI technology developed by Casetext.

Was CoCounsel mentioned in a court order? Contact support@casetext.com.

B. General description of CoCounsel

When a court requires you to disclose or describe the use of generative AI, you may choose to include the following information about CoCounsel:

CoCounsel is an AI legal assistant that can understand and complete delegated tasks.
CoCounsel uses GPT-4, the most advanced large language model from OpenAI and other, proprietary, LLM AI developed by Casetext.
CoCounsel accesses GPT-4 through private, dedicated servers and through a zero-retention API. This means OpenAI cannot view any of that data, store it longer than required to process the request, or use any of it to train the AI model.
Users retain ownership of and control over their data and can remove it completely from the CoCounsel platform at any time.
All data are encrypted in transit and at rest in our systems.
CoCounsel uses specific applications called “skills" to complete a range of substantive legal tasks, like conducting legal research, performing document review, searching large databases, or analyzing and redlining contracts.
CoCounsel’s responses are anchored in real, current information.
- For legal research, the source of information is Casetext’s daily-updated database of primary law for all 50 U.S. state and federal jurisdictions. Learn more.
- For other skills, CoCounsel uses the information specified by the user.
CoCounsel shows its work. For example, CoCounsel’s results include clickable citations so overseeing lawyers can immediately access the full text of relevant cases, statutes, and regulations during legal research, or the full text and page number for relevant portions of underlying documents, contracts, or databases used in other skills.
Because CoCounsel was developed in the ways described above by engineers and attorneys with years of experience applying LLM AI to the law, lawyers using CoCounsel can practice law responsibly. For example, they can effectively manage nonlawyer legal assistance (e.g., Rule 5.3), maintain confidentiality (e.g., Rule 1.6), and meet filing requirements (e.g., FRCP Rule 11), just to name a few.

CoCounsel is not a robot lawyer.

CoCounsel does not replace the role of licensed legal professionals.

CoCounsel is not an AI chatbot.

CoCounsel is not ChatGPT.

CoCounsel is not a ChatGPT plug-in.

CoCounsel does not use a public API to connect to GPT-4.

CoCounsel does not use interactions to train AI.

CoCounsel’s responses are not mere “guesses” with years-old training data.

C. Specific explanation of CoCounsel's legal research

When CoCounsel is assisting with legal research, it generally:

Interprets the legal research request and identifies key filters in the described query, like jurisdiction, date range, publication status of the cases, and so on;
Divides the original legal research request into multiple, relevant legal research requests that use keywords, Boolean operators, and natural-language queries to complete the original request;
Uses Casetext's proprietary LLM AI technology, Parallel Search, to identify primary law that is conceptually-similar with the research request, even when exact keywords are not used.
Runs these queries through Casetext’s daily-updated database of primary law for all 50 U.S. state and federal jurisdictions. Learn more.
Creates a list of relevant authorities.
Analyzes only this list of relevant authorities.
Writes a memo from this analysis that includes short summaries, highlighted quotes, and clickable citations to the full text of each authority.

D. What If I need more information?

To continue learning about this topic, visit AI Court Rules on Westlaw Precision (requires subscription).

For additional information, please use these resources: