On September 30, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 574 into law. Intended as an AI guardrail bill, SB 574 sailed through the California Legislature without a single nay vote. The law amends the California Business and Professions Code and the Code of Civil Procedure to create a framework that requires the attorney responsible for a covered court filing to personally verify its citations and prohibits arbitrators from delegating their decisionmaking process to generative AI. It also makes attorneys who violate the citation-verification requirement subject to sanctions.
SB 574 demonstrates California’s willingness to lead in creating laws that provide AI guardrails amid ever-changing, rapidly expanding technology. And remember that while California's recent law may help pave the way for other state-level AI regulations for the practice of law, the judiciary is also considering its own approach.
Practicing in California? What You Need To Know.
Lawyers have been quick to explore generative AI’s potential to speed up routine work. AI chatbots and other tools can help draft documents, summarize material, organize research, and identify cases that may support a legal argument.
Used carefully, those tools can save time. A lawyer who once spent hours sorting through decisions may be able to generate a useful starting list of potentially relevant authorities. But generative AI is not a substitute for legal judgment or careful research. Judges began to discover that some AI citations in court filings were misapplied, misinterpreted, or hallucinated. This indicated that the attorneys submitting these documents weren’t fact-checking the AI’s output. Beyond irritating judges, the growing number of AI-generated mistakes and hallucinations showed that state laws and judicial codes of conduct lacked sufficient guardrails, safeguards, and punitive sanctions.
SB 574 is intended to solve that issue, with provisions for attorneys and ADR practitioners. For attorneys, the law requires the attorney responsible for submitting the filing to personally verify its citations. They must also consider whether disclosure for other public-facing documents is appropriate.
The law also restricts when attorneys can enter confidential, personally identifying, or other nonpublic information into generative AI systems. An attorney may do so only when access to that information is restricted to the attorney and people the attorney authorizes who are under obligations to protect its confidentiality.
A Separate Rule for Arbitrators
The law imposes a separate rule on arbitrators: They may not delegate any part of their decisionmaking process to generative AI, since arbitrators have to independently evaluate the facts, law, and evidence before them. They must also disclose to the parties when they rely on AI-generated information.
Complaints involving certified ADR firms, providers, or practitioners are handled privately and remain confidential until a decision is reached. Afterward, the State Bar may publicly disclose nonprivileged information about the proceeding, while confidential and privileged communications remain protected.
Best Not To 'Find Out'
The attorney of record who signs off on court filings must personally verify any citations given by AI. Under California CCP 128.7, violators face a motion for sanctions and a show-cause order compelling them to explain why they shouldn’t be punished. Intended to deter repeat offenses, possible sanctions include nonmonetary directions, a penalty paid to the court, or liability for opposing counsel’s attorneys’ fees for billable hours directly caused by the violation. On the other hand, filing a baseless sanctions motion to harass opposing counsel will result in a sanction for the moving party, instead.
Not every litigation document is covered. Disclosures, requests for discovery, responses, and objections may not qualify. The court may also allow filers to withdraw or correct a court filing that contains AI-created errors if one slips through. Of course, most California attorneys will want to be sure that all citations are correct the first time.
