NYSBA Task Force on Artificial Intelligence: 2024 Report and Recommendations — Tracker Record

Tracker Record: Document Identification and Authority Level

Scope: What the 90-Page Report Covers

The NYSBA Task Force Report runs approximately 90 pages and is organized into four substantive sections: an overview of the evolution of AI and generative AI; a benefits-and-risks analysis; a section on the legal profession's relationship to AI (including an ethical impact subsection); and a legislative overview with formal recommendations. The guidelines themselves appear on pages 57–60 and map specific conduct rules to AI-related obligations.

The report was issued against a backdrop of limited attorney adoption. At the time of issuance, a LexisNexis survey cited in the report found that only 43% of attorneys used or planned to use AI tools as part of their work — establishing the adoption baseline against which subsequent growth has been measured.

• Evolution of AI and generative AI: technical background on how large language models and generative AI systems function
• Benefits and risks: efficiency gains, access-to-justice potential, and documented risks including hallucination, bias, and data exposure
• Legal profession impact: how AI affects attorney workflows, with a dedicated ethical impact subsection covering seven areas mapped to the New York Rules of Professional Conduct
• Legislative overview and recommendations: survey of existing AI-related legislation and the Task Force's five formal recommendations to the House of Delegates
• AI and GenAI guidelines (pp. 57–60): per-rule guidance citing 14 specific Rules of Professional Conduct

Ethical Obligations Mapped to New York Rules of Professional Conduct

The report identifies seven ethical impact areas and maps each to specific New York Rules of Professional Conduct. The guidelines section (pp. 57–60) cites 14 rules in total, including Rule 6.1 on pro bono — where the report notes that AI may enable attorneys to substantially increase the scope of pro bono services they can offer. The seven primary areas are detailed below.

Five Formal Recommendations to the House of Delegates

The Task Force made five distinct formal recommendations to the NYSBA House of Delegates. Each maps to a separate institutional action. They are not interchangeable and should not be collapsed into a single directive.

1. Adopt AI/GenAI guidelines and establish a standing committee. The NYSBA should formally adopt the guidelines set out in the report and establish a dedicated section or standing committee tasked with regularly updating them as AI technology evolves. This recommendation led to the creation of the NYSBA Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies (AIETC) as the successor body to the Task Force.
2. Educational initiatives. The NYSBA should prioritize educating judges, lawyers, law students, and regulators on AI technologies. The report specifically emphasizes education on "closed system" AI — tools that do not store user queries as training data — as a category attorneys need to understand when evaluating confidentiality risk.
3. Address unregulated risks. Legislatures and regulators should identify and address AI-related risks not covered by existing laws. This recommendation is directed outward — to legislative and regulatory bodies — rather than to the bar association itself.
4. Revise the Rules of Professional Conduct to include AI competence. The Task Force recommended including AI competence in the Preamble to the New York Rules of Professional Conduct and amending Comment 8 to Rule 1.1 to expressly require that attorneys stay informed about AI technologies. As of June 2026, this amendment has not been adopted.
5. Tailored AI governance. AI regulations should be developed with specificity to the risks and sectors involved, balancing the need for local and global regulatory cooperation rather than applying uniform rules across all AI use cases.

Notable Gaps in the Report

Understanding what the report does not cover is as important as understanding what it does. The following topics are outside the scope of the Task Force Report, and practitioners seeking guidance on them must look to other sources.

• Agentic AI systems: the report does not address AI agents that take autonomous actions, execute multi-step tasks, or interact with external systems on behalf of attorneys or clients.
• Tool-vetting standards and approved vendor lists: the report does not establish criteria for evaluating specific AI products or identify any tools as approved or prohibited for attorney use.
• Malpractice insurance implications: the report does not address how AI use affects professional liability coverage, policy terms, or insurer disclosure requirements.
• Deepfakes and AI-fabricated evidence: the report does not address the use of AI to generate or detect fabricated audio, video, or documentary evidence in legal proceedings.
• Mandatory AI continuing legal education: the report does not recommend or establish any standalone AI-specific CLE requirement for New York attorneys.

New York's Layered AI Compliance Framework: How This Instrument Fits

The NYSBA Task Force Report is the earliest and most comprehensive of the instruments in New York's AI ethics framework, but it is not the most authoritative. New York attorneys face a layered set of obligations that combine non-binding guidance with binding formal ethics opinions and a binding court rule. The instruments must be read together, not in isolation.

The relationship between the NYSBA report and NYC Bar Formal Opinion 2024-5 illustrates how the two instruments interact and diverge. The NYC Bar opinion cites the NYSBA report in a footnote but explicitly declines to follow its recommendation to amend the Rules of Professional Conduct, stating that rule amendments are premature given the pace of technological change. The two instruments reach broadly similar conclusions on attorney obligations under existing rules, but they are issued by different bodies — the NYSBA is the statewide bar association; the NYC Bar is the separate New York City Bar Association — and they carry different authority.

CLE Implications for New York Attorneys

New York has no standalone AI-specific continuing legal education requirement as of June 2026. The NYSBA Task Force Report recommended educational initiatives but did not recommend a mandatory AI CLE credit category, and no such requirement has been adopted.

Primary Source, Last Confirmed Date, and Editorial Disclaimer

The primary source for this tracker entry is the NYSBA Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Report and Recommendations PDF, available at nysba.org. Readers should verify the current text of the report and any subsequent updates from the NYSBA Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies (AIETC) — the standing committee established as the successor to the Task Force — directly at nysba.org before relying on this summary for compliance purposes.