A solo appears at a hybrid hearing from a home office, exhibits cued on a second screen and opposing counsel on the first. The courtroom looks different than it did in 2019. The rules of professional conduct do not.
In my 27 years as an attorney, I have seen a lot of changes in technology. One of the first things I did when I joined the Pennsylvania Bar Institute (PBI) in 1999 was to conduct a technology survey of lawyers who had previously attended its seminars. At that time, I found that many lawyers had one firm-wide email address and did not know how to attach a document to an email. PBI was known for its yellow books. These were the guides that accompanied the courses we organized. Each chapter was sent to us via regular mail. Soon, those lawyers learned email. Speakers started emailing their chapters. But the duties that governed their practice? They barely moved. The American Bar Association (ABA) Model Rules of Professional Conduct did not address technology competence until 2012, more than a decade later, and even then, only in a comment. The tools never stopped changing. The pace only quickened. The duties have not.
Solos and small firm lawyers feel that fast pace first. We run the trial technology, handle the legal research, and manage the ethics compliance ourselves. We do not have an IT department or ethics counsel down the hall. So, the question is a practical one: How do you use the new tools without breaking the old rules?
The Duties That Do Not Move: Competence, Confidentiality, and Candor
Three duties govern everything that follows: competence, confidentiality, and candor to the tribunal. Competence means knowing the law, the facts, and the technology. Comment 8 to ABA Model Rule 1.1 provides that a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, “including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology,” and most states have adopted that language in some form. Note what Comment 8 does not require. It does not require a solo to become a technologist. It requires understanding the benefits and risks of the tools you actually use, or working with someone who does. Confidentiality under Rule 1.6 requires reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized disclosure of client information, wherever that information travels. Candor to the tribunal under Rule 3.3 prohibits false statements of fact or law to a court, whether typed by a lawyer or generated by a machine.
Treat these duties as the test you apply to any new tool, not as an obstacle to using one. Before adopting a new piece of technology, ask three questions. Do I understand it well enough to use it competently? Does it protect my client’s information? Can I stand behind everything it helps me put in front of a court? A tool that passes is fair game. A tool that fails is not, no matter how much time it saves.
Remote Appearances and Virtual Hearings
The pandemic emergency ended. Video hearings remained. Status conferences, motion hearings, depositions, and even some bench trials now happen on screen. Many courts have made remote or hybrid proceedings a permanent option through standing orders and local rules. For solos, a ten-minute status conference no longer costs a morning of travel. That time goes back to clients.
Remote work also raises ethics questions that the physical courtroom never did. Who is sitting off camera in your witness’s room? Ask, on the record, and ask again if the answer changes. During an in-person hearing, you can lean over and whisper to your client. On video, a privileged conversation requires a breakout room or a separate phone line. You should confirm before the hearing how the court expects counsel to handle private discussions. Watch for the witness whose eyes track an unseen screen because scripted testimony is easier to hide on video, and you may be the only person positioned to spot it. Read the standing orders. Courts differ on recording, decorum, and whether counsel may appear remotely at all for a given proceeding. Appearing in violation of a standing order is a poor way to open a hearing.
Competence reaches the client’s side of the camera as well. A client testifying remotely needs the same preparation an in-person witness gets, plus the basics of the format: a quiet room, a stable connection, a camera at eye level, and clear instructions that no one may help, coach, or hand them documents off-screen.
Remote appearances also carry an access benefit. A client in a rural county, a client who cannot take a day off work, or a client whose disability makes travel to a courthouse difficult can now participate in a proceeding that once required travel and lost wages. But that benefit only exists if the client has the broadband, the device, and any needed accommodation to join. A hearing the client cannot meaningfully attend is not a convenience.
Once everyone is connected, the work shifts from appearing to presenting.
Digital Evidence and Trial Presentation
E-filing and electronic case management are no longer innovations, though adoption is uneven. Many courts require e-filing, while many solos still run their practices without formal case management software. The change worth watching is elsewhere, on the presentation side: trial presentation software, exhibit-sharing platforms, and annotation tools that let you publish an exhibit, highlight the key sentence, and keep the rhythm of the examination intact. Used well, these tools let a one-lawyer shop present like a trial team.
These tools do not lower the evidentiary bar. An exhibit on a screen still needs foundation and authentication, and electronically stored information brings its own questions: who created the record, how it was kept, and whether the version on the screen matches the original. Judges have seen enough polished presentations to know that polish is not proof.
Authentication is also getting harder. Photos, audio, and video can now be generated or altered convincingly, and the tools that do the altering are cheap and easy to use. A lawyer should expect challenges to digital media, should be prepared to raise them when an opposing exhibit does not add up, and should be ready to answer them for exhibits of their own. The old rules still hold. Witness testimony, chain of custody, and metadata are how you lay a foundation today, just as testimony and photographic negatives did the job decades ago. The tools for faking evidence got better. The tools for authenticating it never went away. In practice, collect early and preserve carefully. Keep original files rather than screenshots, preserve metadata, and document who handled the evidence and when.
The habit that protects all of this is unglamorous: Test the courtroom display the day before trial, not the morning of. The lawyer who does this keeps the judge’s schedule and, more valuable, the judge’s confidence.
The Tech Stack Behind the Tech
Confidentiality is not only an artificial intelligence (AI) issue. It applies to the video platform, the exhibit-sharing service, the client-communication channel, and your vendor contracts. A solo who runs an unsecured video link or emails privileged exhibits without encryption has a Rule 1.6 problem.
Consider one pitfall. A lawyer takes a client deposition on a free consumer video app because it was fast, rather than on a platform vetted for confidentiality and record retention. That lawyer has now inherited whatever the app does with the recording: where the file is stored, who can access it, and what rights the provider claims in its terms of service.
The same analysis applies to the way you communicate. Texting case strategy from a personal phone or sending privileged documents through a free email account moves client information onto services built for consumers, not for confidentiality. With a free account, your data is the price. When the data is your client’s, that is a price you cannot agree to pay.
Do the vendor due diligence. Read the terms of service and privacy policy before trusting a tool with client data. Confirm the platform encrypts data in transit and at rest. Know where client data is stored, who can reach it, and what happens to it when the engagement ends. Ask what the vendor does with the data beyond providing the service; sometimes, the answer is a reason to walk away. The duty attaches to the whole technology stack, not just the tool of the moment.
AI as One More Tool
AI is one technology among several. It must be measured against the same three duties of competence, confidentiality, and candor to the tribunal. Start with what it does well. AI tools can review and summarize documents, help prepare deposition and cross-examination outlines, produce first drafts of motions, build timelines, and spot issues across records too large for one lawyer to hold in mind. For a solo staring at a banker’s box of medical records or a thousand pages of deposition transcripts, that is leverage that used to require associates.
AI is a drafting and analysis aid, not a source of legal authority. As an aid, it is legitimate. As authority, it is where lawyers get in trouble; the lawyer, not the tool, is accountable for every word filed. ABA Formal Opinion 512 (2024), the ABA’s first ethics guidance on generative AI, works through the issues in terms of competence, confidentiality, client communication, fees, and candor.
Three points from that opinion, and the rules behind it, deserve a closer look.
- Confidentiality. Typing client facts into a consumer chatbot may breach Rule 1.6 depending on how the tool stores and uses data, as many consumer tools retain prompts. Know where the data goes before you type anything sensitive.
- Supervision. A solo is not always alone. When a paralegal prompts the AI or a vendor runs the e-discovery platform, the lawyer remains responsible under Rules 5.1 and 5.3. The oversight duty does not disappear because someone else touched the keyboard.
- Fees. Opinion 512 addresses billing directly. A lawyer cannot charge a client for hours the AI saved as if they were spent, and, per Rule 1.5, the lawyer should be transparent about material AI use. The efficiency belongs to the client who is paying for the work. That is also a reason to rethink the billing model. If AI compresses the hours, an hourly rate may no longer capture the value delivered, and a flat fee or a value-based arrangement may fit the work better. Done right, that serves both sides: The client pays for the value of the work rather than the clock, and the lawyer is paid fairly for expertise that now takes less time to deliver.
Formal Opinion 512 also takes up client communication under Rule 1.4. Whether to tell a client about AI use depends on the circumstances, including whether the client’s own information will go into the tool, so the safe course is to think about disclosure before the work starts, not after. And disclosure is not only a precaution. In my experience, some clients now expect their lawyers to use these tools; handled well, disclosing the use of AI can build confidence rather than undermine it.
Next comes candor, the issue that is currently getting the most attention when it comes to generative AI (GenAI). GenAI can produce what is politely called a hallucination: a confident, well-formatted citation to a case that does not exist, or a real case cited for something it does not say. Mata v. Avianca, Inc., 678 F. Supp. 3d 443 (S.D.N.Y. 2023), was the wake-up call, the first widely reported sanction of lawyers who filed AI-invented cases. The lawyers in Mata submitted a brief full of nonexistent cases, then doubled down when questioned, and were sanctioned under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 11. Mata was not proof that AI has no place in law. It was proof that filing anything unverified has no place in law. Since Mata, sanctions have escalated to fines, mandatory CLE, referrals to disciplinary authorities, and fee-shifting to opposing counsel. Candor to the tribunal is not satisfied by good intentions, and “the AI wrote it” is not a defense.
Practical Guardrails for Solos and Small Firms
This all comes down to habits, and habits are what a solo can control. Here are some of the habits that can help attorneys avoid ethical violations due to technology.
- Read the terms of service and the privacy policies of the technology you use.
- When using AI, verify every citation against the actual reporter or a trusted database before filing.
- Read the case, not the AI summary of it.
- Know where your data goes. Use tools with contractual confidentiality protections for client information.
- Vet the whole technology stack, including the video platform and the exhibit-sharing service.
- Supervise the people and vendors who use these tools on your matters.
- Check local and standing court rules on AI disclosure and remote procedure before each appearance.
- Test courtroom technology in advance.
- Keep the client informed about material technology use and bill for it fairly.
None of these suggestions require a big budget or a technology committee. Rather, they require the habits solos already have: preparation, skepticism, and personal accountability. Used carefully, these tools let a solo compete with larger firms, serve clients who could not otherwise afford the fight, and reach people in places a firm never used to reach.
New Tools, Old Rules
The tools will keep changing. The duties will not. The lawyer who treats competence, confidentiality, and candor as the test for any new tool will adopt technology safely and probably profitably. The lawyer who treats those duties as an afterthought becomes next month’s sanctions headline. The yellow books gave way to downloads, and the lectern gave way to the second screen. What did not change is the lawyer standing behind the work. New tools, old rules, and the lawyer accountable for the results. In a period of fast change, that accountability is what still marks the professional.
Originally published in the ABA GP Solo Magazine. October 2026.