Catherine Gage O’grady (U Arizona James E. Rogers College Law) and Casey O’grady (Harvard U Harvard Law) have posted “Agentic Workflows in the Practice of Law—AI Agents as Ethics Counsel” (Agentic Workflows in the Practice of Law—AI Agents as Ethics Counsel, 39 Geo. J. Legal Ethics (forthcoming 2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Generative AI is reshaping legal practice as law firms invest in AI technology and prepare for a future where AI agents operate alongside human lawyers. While such a future raises numerous ethical concerns, it also opens new opportunities for ethical practice. This article explores the potential for AI agents to improve ethical decision-making within legal practices. We start by defining key concepts such as AI agents and agentic workflows. We then provide a brief overview of the role of ethics counsel in law firms and discuss critical behavioral challenges in the human practice of law. Finally, we introduce a new model of AI agents acting as dedicated ethics counsel. These agents should be specialized, accountable, and systematic to provide comprehensive ethical guidance in a firm’s legal workflows. These ethical agents have the potential to mitigate the human biases in traditional legal practice and offer an efficient and scalable approach to ensure ethical compliance in an increasingly AI-driven legal landscape. To demonstrate this model, we end with real-world examples of what initial ethical agent contributions could look like in practice.