An advisory committee to the Colorado Supreme Court recently created a subcommittee that will evaluate existing rules barring the unauthorized practice of law to determine if changes are necessary to accommodate emerging artificial intelligence-powered legal tools.

The March 1 vote of the Advisory Committee on the Practice of Law came at the request of the Colorado Access to Justice Commission. The commission advocates for expanded legal aid and better tools for self-represented litigants in civil cases. The commission’s director, Elisa Overall, noted AI tools can foster access to justice and efficiency in the legal profession.

“In collaboration with Colorado Legal Services, the ATJC is in the process of developing a robust online legal information portal to help Coloradans understand important legal issues that affect them and assist them in taking steps necessary to address these issues,” she wrote in a Jan. 18 letter to the Supreme Court’s advisory committee. “We are concerned, however, that the Unauthorized Practice of Law Rules may block the adoption of new technologies in Colorado for use in the legal system.”

Specifically, Overall cited the rule that deems any “website, application, software, bot, or other technology that interactively offers or provides” legal services as engaging in the unauthorized practice of law.

Jessica Yates, who heads Colorado’s attorney regulation office, told Colorado Politics she will pull together an AI subcommittee in the coming weeks to explore any potential rule changes.

Last month, multiple judges spoke at an event sponsored by the Colorado Bar Association’s Judicial Liaison Section, where they suggested there is a place for generative AI in the legal profession after all.

“I don’t love the blanket initiatives you’ve seen some companies take, which is AI: not allowed. Because people are gonna use it, especially the younger generations,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell. “So, it’s better to talk about it and adopt responsible use policies.”

Justice Maria E. Berkenkotter agreed lawyers do not need to know precisely how AI programs generate their output, “but you do have to understand enough to be careful.”

Some states have already moved forward in encouraging innovation. For years, Utah has maintained the “Sandbox,” where providers may offer unconventional legal services under relaxed regulations, with an eye toward gathering data and assessing consumer complaints. To date, 24,000 individual customers have used tools that include legal chatbots and document generators.

Judge Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov of the Court of Appeals recently attended a demonstration of an AI program that generated text with real legal citations in response to a prompt – a far cry from previous attempts to use ChatGPT that resulted in fake citations unwittingly submitted in various court filings.

“Regardless of what AI tool you use, you’ve got to check, you’ve got to edit, you’ve got to verify,” he said. “It’s like working with a very good first-year law student. The person is smart and skilled and isn’t a lawyer, so you have to check everything that comes out of the tool.”