Technological competence: what the codes of conduct and Canadian law societies say about AI

The duty: rule 3.1-2 and its technology commentary

Rule 3.1-2 of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada's Model Code of Professional Conduct reads, in full: "A lawyer must perform all legal services undertaken on a client’s behalf to the standard of a competent lawyer."¹ A Federation consultation report of January 31, 2017 proposed commentary on technological competence, observing that "Issues associated with the proliferation of technology are not currently specifically addressed in the Model Code."⁵ The commentary appears as paragraphs [4A] and [4B] in the Model Code as amended October 19, 2019, and is unchanged in the current version, as amended April 2024.⁶

Saskatchewan's code carries the rule and the commentary under the same numbers. Its commentary reads:⁷

[4A] To maintain the required level of competence, a lawyer should develop an understanding of, and ability to use, technology relevant to the nature and area of the lawyer’s practice and responsibilities. A lawyer should understand the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, recognizing the lawyer’s duty to protect confidential information set out in section 3.3.

[4B] The required level of technological competence will depend upon whether the use or understanding of technology is necessary to the nature and area of the lawyer’s practice and responsibilities and whether the relevant technology is reasonably available to the lawyer. In determining whether technology is reasonably available, consideration should be given to factors including:

a) The lawyer’s or law firm’s practice areas;

b) The geographic locations of the lawyer’s or firm’s practice; and

c) The requirements of clients.

The Law Society of Saskatchewan added the two paragraphs on November 29, 2019.⁷ The Model Code numbers the rule and both paragraphs the same way; Saskatchewan's [4A] is the Model Code's word for word, and its [4B] differs from the Model Code's in two words.⁶

Three features of the commentary shape what follows. The duty is relative: [4B] makes the required level depend on the lawyer's practice and on what is reasonably available, measured by the practice areas, the practice's location and the clients' requirements. The duty covers risks as well as benefits, and for generative AI the risk now documented in the case law is the invented citation; Ontario's Law Society Tribunal put it this way in June 2026: "There is a growing understanding in the legal community that unsupervised artificial intelligence tools are unreliable. They will generate fictitious citations, and misunderstand and misrepresent legal concepts."⁸ And the duty is tied to confidentiality in its first paragraph, by the reference to section 3.3, which is why the law societies' guidance deals with what goes into a tool as well as what comes out of it.

The other rules that the guidance and the courts return to also carry the same numbers in the Model Code and in Saskatchewan's code: rule 3.3-1 on confidentiality, rule 5.1-1 on candour to the tribunal, rule 6.1-1 on supervision and rule 3.6-1 on fees.⁹

Law society by law society

The table covers all Canadian law societies that regulate lawyers, thirteen of them, with the Federation's Model Code for reference. For each it gives where the code carries the technology commentary, when the commentary was added where the code or the society says so, and the society's guidance on generative AI with a passage from it. Every entry was read on September 24, 2026, on the issuing body's own site, or on LegisQuébec for Quebec's regulation.²

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Where the table says none found, we searched the society's own site and the open web and read the society's resource pages; a search that finds nothing is not proof that nothing exists.¹⁰ The Chambre des notaires du Québec regulates notaries, not lawyers, and is not in the table: the Federation reports that it is the one law society that has not implemented the Model Code, Quebec's Code of ethics of notaries does not mention technology, and we found no guidance on generative AI from the Chambre as of September 24, 2026.¹¹

What the guidance agrees on

The ten guidance documents differ in length and form, from Newfoundland and Labrador's short web notice to Ontario's white paper and Alberta's playbook.² They come back to four points, not all with the same force.

Checking the output is the lawyer's job, and a person's. Ontario says that "The verification process should be completed by a human being, not the AI system itself."¹² Saskatchewan requires review of "any legal analysis and citations to authority"; Nova Scotia tells lawyers to "verify the accuracy, jurisdiction, and reliability of any AI-generated content before using it in legal work"; and Prince Edward Island says that the competent lawyer's own judgment "involves more than reviewing results from generative AI for obvious inconsistencies and errors".¹³ Each of the ten says the same in its own words.

Several treat the tool's output as delegated work. British Columbia accepts that rule 6.1-1 on supervision "was intended to cover human-to-human supervision", but reads it as "an important reminder that lawyers are ultimately responsible for all work product they oversee, whether it be produced by non-lawyer staff or technology-based solutions".¹⁴ Manitoba says to "Treat generative AI tools as another delegation of your work"; Alberta says to "Consider anything generated by Gen AI as being produced by a law student who requires supervision"; Prince Edward Island says the lawyer "has the duty to review any generative AI results to ensure compliance with their professional obligations in the same manner as using human assistance in delegation of work".¹⁵ The rule itself speaks of staff and assistants. Applying it to software is the societies' reading, and the courts, as the next section shows, have held lawyers to the same responsibility for work done by contractors and by whoever did the research.

Confidentiality comes before the first prompt. The commentary ties technological competence to the duty of confidentiality in its first paragraph, and the guidance applies that to what a lawyer types: Nova Scotia's guide says "Do not input client information into AI tools unless you are satisfied that adequate privacy and security protections are in place."¹⁶ What may go into a particular tool is the subject of our article on client files in Claude and ChatGPT.

Some say the client should hear about it. Saskatchewan says that "A lawyer should consider disclosing to a client if they intend to use generative AI in carrying out their representation", and Alberta tells lawyers to "Be clear with your clients about your safe use of Gen AI in your retainer letter."¹⁷

Where the law societies differ

Quebec puts the duty in the regulation itself rather than in commentary. The second paragraph of section 21 of the Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers provides that "the knowledge and skills related to information technologies used within the scope of the lawyer’s professional activities are part of the knowledge and skills that a lawyer develops and keeps up to date."¹⁸ The Barreau du Québec's guide calls mastery of information technology "une composante essentielle de la compétence" [an essential component of competence], and from April 1, 2026 the Barreau made a training course on generative AI mandatory for all members, to be completed before April 1, 2027.¹⁹

New Brunswick's code carries only the first of the two paragraphs, as "4[A]", without the second paragraph's factors. Its Appendix B, "Guidelines on Ethics and the New Technology", adds that "a lawyer using technology must either have reasonable understanding of the technology used in the lawyer's practice, or access to someone who has such understanding."²⁰

Prince Edward Island's code has no technology commentary at all, yet its guidelines rest the duty on rules 3.1-1 and 3.1-2 and say that the competent lawyer "should ensure they are applying their own legal reasoning and analysis to any AI generated outputs".²¹ Ontario's Law Society Tribunal, likewise, found the failure to check AI-generated authorities in rule 3.1-2 itself.²² A lawyer whose code lacks the commentary is not outside the duty. The Northwest Territories' guidelines ground technological competence in rule 3.2-1, on quality of service, although that territory's code also carries the commentary.²³

The dates vary as well. British Columbia's guidance says that it "was prepared in October 2023"; the Supreme Court of British Columbia, quoting its words, described it as guidance the Law Society issued "in November 2023".²⁴ Alberta's playbook was last updated in February 2026; Nova Scotia's 42-page guide of July 15, 2025 followed a four-page short guide of 2023.²⁵

What courts and tribunals have done

In June 2026 Ontario's Law Society Tribunal, citing a published count of the reported cases as of March 27, 2026, recorded that "the number of cases reported on CanLII where a court or tribunal has identified that a party has submitted a fictitious citation is going up, not down: seven in 2024, 86 in 2025, and 39 in the first quarter of 2026, totalling 132." It added that "in 24 of 132 cases, a represented party submitted hallucinated citations."²⁶ The decisions listed in the note, 24 read for this article from 2024 to 2026, are a floor, not a census; 15 of them, in ten proceedings, concern filings by lawyers or licensees.²⁷ Read together, they treat an invented citation as the lawyer's failure, not the tool's, and several say in terms that it is a failure of competence.

In Zhang v Chen, counsel's notice of application in a British Columbia parenting dispute included cases "obtained from ChatGPT, a generative AI platform" that did not exist.²⁸ The court held that "Citing fake cases in court filings and other materials handed up to the court is an abuse of process and is tantamount to making a false statement to the court."²⁹ It found no intent to deceive and refused special costs, but ordered counsel to bear personally the costs of the extra effort the fake cases caused, and to review all of her files before the court and report.³⁰ Its closing paragraph states the competence point: "Competence in the selection and use of any technology tools, including those powered by AI, is critical."³¹

In Ko v Li, an Ontario judge who suspected that a factum had been prepared with AI and its cases not checked set out the lawyer's duties, including the duty "to use technology, conduct legal research, and prepare court documents competently", and ordered counsel to show cause why she should not be cited for contempt.³² Two weeks later he dismissed the proceeding on conditions, after counsel acknowledged the factum was created using ChatGPT, holding that "The error was not delegating the factum or using generative AI to assist in drafting the factum" but signing and relying on it without ensuring the cases were authentic. In the same reasons he said that some of the duties he had listed were not necessarily owed to the court, and that "issues concerning a lawyer’s duties of technological competency and staff supervision, for example, are better dealt with by the Law Society."³³ By a letter of September 30, 2025 counsel told the court that some of her statements in that proceeding had been untrue; the judge required her to show cause on a new contempt and referred carriage of it to the Attorney General of Ontario. In January 2026, with Crown counsel appearing, the court retitled that proceeding to reflect its criminal nature and adjourned it to a case conference, and the Law Society Tribunal recorded on July 16, 2026 that the proceeding "remains ongoing".³⁴

The Law Society of Ontario's discipline case arose from the same motion and the same endorsement.³⁵ In Law Society of Ontario v Lee the lawyer admitted, and the Tribunal found, that she failed to serve her client "by relying on a factum prepared by AI containing only non-existent and misrepresented case law", then "deliberately misled a court multiple times" about her use of AI, and was not honest with the Law Society.³⁶ The Tribunal separated the two wrongs precisely. Preparing a factum with non-existent authorities, and one that did not support the proposition argued, was a failure "to perform legal services for her client to the standard of a competent lawyer" under rule 3.1-2; but "it is not professional misconduct for a lawyer to use AI to assist in the preparation of a factum."³⁷ It accepted a joint submission of a six-month suspension and $10,000 in costs.³⁸

The Law Society of New Brunswick has proceeded the same way. Its notice of complaint of July 22, 2026 charged a lawyer whose brief to the Provincial Court cited ten fictitious authorities out of twelve with having "Used generative artificial intelligence in an incompetent manner", contrary to its rules on integrity, competence, quality of service and advocacy and to the Code's Appendix B on ethics and new technology. On September 3, 2026 a panel of its Discipline Committee, with the lawyer's consent and after he agreed to plead guilty, suspended him for two weeks, fined him $10,000, ordered $2,000 in costs and 4.5 hours of professional development on the use of AI, and required him to review all his files before the courts and tell the court and opposing counsel of any cases or case summaries created by generative AI.³⁹

In Reddy v Saroya, the Court of Appeal of Alberta dealt with an appellant's factum that "contained references to cases that do not exist", and invoked the Law Society of Alberta's rule 3.1-2 and its technology commentary, citing the Law Society's playbook.⁴⁰ Two of its sentences set a practice standard: "The time needed to verify and cross-reference cited case authorities generated by a large language model must be planned for as part of a lawyer’s practice management responsibilities", and where someone else prepares the material, "the lawyer whose name appears on the filed document bears ultimate responsibility for the material’s form and contents".⁴¹ The Court listed the consequences open to a court, from striking submissions and costs to a penalty, contempt proceedings or a referral to the Law Society.⁴² In a separate costs ruling in January 2026 it rejected a plea of "mere inadvertence": Alberta's rules require an appeal factum's table of authorities to hyperlink each authority, compliance would have exposed the cases at once, and "nearly half" of the authorities listed did not exist.⁴³ The factum had been drafted by a contractor using a large language model, which did not absolve lead counsel "of the need to adequately review work prepared by someone else prior to filing it with the Court".⁴⁴ The Court ordered costs of $17,550 plus GST payable by lead counsel personally, resting the order also on the amended factum counsel had filed and on his first reply to opposing counsel, which had attributed the errors to typography.⁴⁵

Kapahi Real Estate Inc v Elite Real Estate Club of Toronto Inc moved the problem a step further. Counsel's factum "cited real cases with correct neutral citations", but "The quotations do not exist in the cases."⁴⁶ Counsel denied using AI; the judge thought AI the most obvious explanation but said he was "not making that finding".⁴⁷ He observed that if counsel had not been truthful, "the cover-up may be worse than the initial error", declined, on unclear facts, to refer a contempt proceeding to the Attorney General, and referred his decision to the Law Society of Ontario.⁴⁸

In the Federal Court, an applicant's in-house counsel had "subcontracted the legal research" for an urgent motion and "did not verify the references provided"; the authorities cited did not exist.⁴⁹ The Court held that "there must be consequences to such a serious breach" of professional conduct, "even if counsel did not intend to mislead the Court", and ordered the applicant and its counsel personally to pay costs on a solicitor-client basis, costs it said were not solely related to the AI issue.⁵⁰

The duty in the codes is the lawyer's, but courts apply the same expectation to everyone who files. In a Saskatchewan family case, a self-represented party who succeeded on his application was refused the costs he might otherwise have received, because the cases in his brief "do not exist or do not exist by the name"; the court noted that he was "not subject to a code of professional conduct or the sanctions which might be imposed by a Law Society" but still had "an obligation to not mislead the Court".⁵¹ In Nova Scotia, a court found that a self-represented plaintiff's non-existent citations were, "more likely than not", generated by the AI program she used, and held that cross-referencing includes "ensuring the cases stand for the principles for which they are cited".⁵² The Court of Appeal of Alberta added $500 in costs against a self-represented appellant whose factum cited three authorities that did not exist, and warned that self-represented litigants "can expect more substantial penalties to be imposed in future cases should they fail to comply with the Notice", the Alberta courts' notice of October 6, 2023 on the use of large language models.⁵³ A lawyer who files the same thing answers to a code and a law society as well.

What a competent practice looks like now

Check what the authority says, not only that it exists. A search confirming that each case exists would have passed the factum in Kapahi. The decisions ask for more: it is "the lawyer’s duty to read cases before submitting them to a court as precedential authorities", and checking includes "ensuring the cases stand for the principles for which they are cited".⁵⁴ In practice that means reading each quotation against the text of the decision, each pinpoint against the paragraph cited, and each proposition against what the case decided.

Know what the rules of court require, and where they stop. Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure require every factum to include a statement signed by the party's lawyer, or by someone the lawyer has specifically authorized, "certifying that the person signing the statement is satisfied as to the authenticity of every authority cited in the factum"; the rule was enacted in 2024, and the court in Ko v Li said the Civil Rules Committee made it "to address the new phenomenon of AI hallucinations". The next subrule presumes an authority to be authentic, "absent evidence to the contrary", if it is published by a government, "on the Canadian Legal Information Institute website (CanLII), on a court’s website or by a commercial publisher of court decisions".⁵⁵ Alberta's Rules of Court require a factum in the Court of Appeal to carry, in its table of authorities, a hyperlink to each authority, or copies or extracts where no hyperlink is available.⁴³ Both rules go to whether an authority exists and can be found, not to what it says: the authorities cited in Kapahi were real cases, and it was the quotations that did not exist.⁴⁶ Checking each quotation, pinpoint and proposition against its source is the lawyer's duty whatever the rules of court require. The practice directions that require a declaration when AI is used differ from court to court, and our article on client files in Claude and ChatGPT sets out those we found. A declaration does not replace the check: the Federal Court told a self-represented applicant who had disclosed her use of AI that the disclosure "does not absolve her of her duty to the Court to verify the accuracy and reliability of the legal authorities upon which she relies".⁵⁶

Supervise the tool and the people using it. Rule 6.1-1 gives the lawyer "complete professional responsibility for all business entrusted to them" and requires direct supervision of "staff and assistants to whom the lawyer delegates particular tasks and functions".⁵⁷ The decisions extend that to whoever produced the draft: the lawyer's duty "to supervise staff and review material prepared for her signature" in Ko v Li, the contractor in Reddy v Saroya, the subcontracted research in the Federal Court.⁵⁸ Reddy v Saroya adds the practical point that the time to check must be planned for, "especially during busy times".⁴¹

Correct at once, and tell the truth. Rule 5.1-1 requires an advocate to treat the tribunal "with candour, fairness, courtesy, and respect".⁵⁹ In Zhang v Chen the court found it unfortunate that the fake cases were not disclosed to opposing counsel when counsel first discovered them; in Reddy v Saroya, where counsel's first answer to opposing counsel suggested typographical or similar errors, the court said that once a factum is filed and there is any doubt about the review, "it was incumbent on counsel to go check again and correct any misleading information".⁶⁰ The heaviest consequences in these decisions, the six-month suspension and the new contempt proceeding in the Ko v Li matter, followed untrue statements about the error, not the error alone.³⁶

Keep a record of what was used and what was checked. As the Tribunal recorded in Law Society of Ontario v Lee, the judge asked the lawyer at the hearing whether she had used ChatGPT to write the factum; in Zhang v Chen the court ordered counsel to review every file she had before it and to disclose any materials containing citations or summaries obtained from generative AI tools.⁶¹ A note, kept with each document, of the tool used and the person who checked each authority makes both of those questions easy to answer truthfully.

Bill for what was done. Rule 3.6-1 forbids a fee that is not "fair and reasonable and has been disclosed in a timely fashion", and its commentary lists "the time and effort required and spent" as a factor.⁶² Saskatchewan's guidelines say that "A lawyer cannot charge hourly fees for their time that do not reflect the time actually spent", and the dismissal in Ko v Li was conditional on counsel not billing her client for the research, factum and attendance on the motion.⁶³ How to price work a tool did in minutes is a question for a separate article.

What the duty does not require

It does not require perfection. Saskatchewan's commentary says the rule "does not require a standard of perfection", although "gross neglect in a particular matter or a pattern of neglect or mistakes in different matters may be evidence of such a failure".⁶⁴ It does not require any particular product: when Alberta adopted the commentary, the Law Society said that "The amendment does not require lawyers to purchase the latest and most expensive technological solutions. They need to know how to effectively use the technology they or their clients actually use."⁶⁵ And it does not require refusing AI. The Law Society Tribunal said that using AI to help prepare a factum is not professional misconduct; the judge in Ko v Li said that "it is not the use of AI itself that is the concern"; and the Federal Court called generative AI "a perfectly valid tool for counsel to use; however, in this Court, its use must be declared and as a matter of both practice, good sense and professionalism, its output must be verified by a human."⁶⁶ The tool in that case was described in the Court's reasons as "a professional legal research platform designed specifically for Canadian immigration and refugee law practitioners", and when the Court later ordered counsel to pay $100 in costs personally it said that "the real issue is not the use of generative artificial intelligence but the failure to declare that use".⁶⁷ Two law societies say the text of their own guidance's conclusion was generated by ChatGPT and reviewed by the Law Society before it was included.⁶⁸

Nor, today, does it require using AI. The Nova Scotia Barristers' Society's four-page guide of 2023 had suggested that where a reliable tool can materially reduce the time a task takes, "there would seem to be a strong argument that a lawyer’s efficiency obligation mandates its use".⁶⁹ The Society's guide of July 15, 2025 does not repeat that argument. It says that "Lawyers are not obligated to adopt every new technology, and AI may not be appropriate for all practices or clients", while warning, on fees, that even for a firm that does not use AI, "its availability may change public expectations about what constitutes reasonable time and cost for certain legal services."⁷⁰ The technology commentary scales the duty to the lawyer's practice and to what is reasonably available, and the codes require neither the use of these tools nor their refusal. What they require of a lawyer who uses one is the understanding the commentary asked for in 2019, of what the tool does well and what it gets wrong, and, as the decisions above hold, a check of its work before a client or a court relies on it. Saskatchewan's guidelines add that the check is not the whole of it: "The duty of competence requires more than the detection and elimination of false AI-generated results."⁷¹

Where WarmLoop fits, and where it does not

WarmLoop is a Canadian legal research and verification service that a lawyer uses through an AI assistant. It works today with Claude, it is built for AI assistants that support the open Model Context Protocol, and each account is set up by hand during the current early access. It is sold by the company that wrote and published this article, so read what follows as WarmLoop's own account of itself, and put it to the same questions this article puts to any other tool.⁷²

The duty described above has two parts: an understanding of what a tool does well and where it fails, and a check of its output before a client or a court relies on it. WarmLoop is built for the second. Its research returns Canadian decisions and legislation from the text it holds, so that an assistant can take its authorities from that corpus rather than from memory. Its citation check reports, for each authority in a draft, whether the citation resolves to a decision it holds under the name given, whether the pinpoint holds and whether the quoted words match the text, and it returns the disposition and the paragraphs either side of the pinpoint, so that the lawyer can read whether the case holds what it is cited for, which is the reading the decisions above required. Its note-up lists the later decisions it holds that cite the case, with their treatment of it where that has been analysed and the share not yet analysed stated rather than hidden. Research and citation checking need no document uploads. A brief published as a record carries the server's own re-check of every citation and quotation, dated, so that a reader can see what was checked and when.⁷²

Where it does not fit is the duty itself: the codes leave all of it with the lawyer, the check included. "Verified" means that WarmLoop found the case, the pinpoint and a close match for the quoted words in the copy it holds, which is an unofficial one; it does not mean that the authority is good law or that the proposition is supported, and a decision WarmLoop does not hold is reported as not held, never as non-existent. WarmLoop's own Terms say that its verification features reduce the work of verification and do not discharge it.⁷³ The Law Society of Ontario's instruction that verification be completed by a human being, and the Federal Court's that AI output be verified by a human, describe a step the lawyer still takes; what a tool of this kind changes is where that step starts, at the paragraph rather than at a search box. It does not supply the understanding the commentary asks for, which is the lawyer's to acquire, and it machine-checks: it does not review or endorse an argument.