The SRA published a formal warning notice on AI misuse in August. It is worth reading past the headline. Two things worried the regulator enough to write it down: solicitors filing court documents with invented citations, and client material being pasted into AI tools without anyone checking where that data goes.
There is a line in it that should stop every small firm cold. Quoting the Upper Tribunal, the notice says that putting client letters into an open AI tool places that information in the public domain. The SRA then warns that privilege may be permanently waived and unable to be recovered. Not reduced. Waived.
Here is the uncomfortable part. A large firm may have an AI committee, an approved-vendor list and an IT team reading the terms of service. A six-fee-earner firm may have one partner covering compliance, finance and technology decisions. The regulatory duty is identical. The infrastructure is not.
The notice is not anti-AI. It says firms can use these tools if they meet their professional obligations. But the standard it keeps returning to is supervision: you are accountable for the output however it was produced, and you need to understand the safeguards around client data before you use the tool, not after.
For a small firm, the practical translation is short. Know which tools your people actually use, not which ones you think they use. Keep client material out of anything without suitable contractual and technical safeguards. Verify every legal citation against the primary source before it leaves the firm.
None of this needs a committee. It needs an afternoon and a written position.
Sources
- SRA, "Misuse of AI - Warning notice", 17 August 2026: https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/guidance/misuse-ai/