General · 2 hours

AI and Technology in California Legal PracticeCalifornia MCLE, 2 hours

AI and Technology in California Legal Practice covers technology competence, confidentiality, supervision, and responsible AI use. Delivery, credential, and regulatory-credit eligibility are stated on the course page.

Professional training or exam-preparation material. No CE/MCLE/CPE credit hours are issued.

Course at a glance

Level
Intermediate
Estimated time
2 hours
Prerequisite
Review the licensing eligibility and credit status shown on this page before enrolling.

Skills you will practice

  • Explain and apply §1 The Frame — No New Rules, Every Old One.
  • Explain and apply §2 Competence — Verification as the Load-Bearing Skill.
  • Explain and apply §3 Confidentiality — the Strictest Duty Meets the Hungriest Tools.
  • Explain and apply §4 Supervision, Candor, and Fees — the Remaining Duties in AI Dress.
  • Explain and apply §5 Part I Self-Check.

Learning objectives

  • Explain and apply §1 The Frame — No New Rules, Every Old One.
  • Explain and apply §2 Competence — Verification as the Load-Bearing Skill.
  • Explain and apply §3 Confidentiality — the Strictest Duty Meets the Hungriest Tools.
  • Explain and apply §4 Supervision, Candor, and Fees — the Remaining Duties in AI Dress.
  • Explain and apply §5 Part I Self-Check.

Assessment and timing

Knowledge check plus 2 final exam versions.

Passing score: 70%.

Final timing: 1 minute per question.

Hands-on practice

Applied course exercises

Use the course rules in practical scenarios and exercises drawn from the published syllabus.

  • §5.5 Case Bench — Part I's Three Files
  • §8 The Practice Benches — AI in the Workflows
  • §9 Case Bench — Four Files
  • §10.8 Second Case Bench — Two Files at Full Complexity
  • §10.15 The Graduation Exercise — One Matter, Start to Finish, Every Gate Working

Full syllabus

Part I — The Duties, Applied to AI and Legal Technology

  • §1 The Frame — No New Rules, Every Old One
  • §2 Competence — Verification as the Load-Bearing Skill
  • §3 Confidentiality — the Strictest Duty Meets the Hungriest Tools
  • §4 Supervision, Candor, and Fees — the Remaining Duties in AI Dress
  • §5 Part I Self-Check
  • §5.1 Model Literacy — What the Lawyer Actually Needs to Know About How These Tools Work
  • §5.2 Prompt Craft With the Duty Attached — the Confidentiality-Safe Patterns
  • §5.3 The Disclosure Landscape — Courts, Clients, and Counterparties
  • §5.4 The Advising Layer — When the Client's Business Is the AI Question
  • §5.5 Case Bench — Part I's Three Files
  • §5.6 Translations — Saying the Program in Client English
  • §5.7 The Regulatory Landscape — Who Governs Legal AI, and From Where
  • §5.8 Rapid-Recall Bench — Part I
  • §5.9 The Tool Taxonomy — Knowing What Kind of Thing You Are Using
  • §5.10 The Access Dividend — Technology's Other Ledger
  • §5.11 Glossary — the Course's Terms, Fixed
  • §5.12 The Professions' Shared Question — AI Across This Catalog's Licenses
  • §5.13 The Solo and Small-Firm Implementation — the Program at Minimum Viable Scale
  • §5.14 The Objections Bench — Eight Resistances, Answered on the Record
  • §5.15 Reading the Vendor Pitch — a Consumer's Grammar for AI Marketing

Part II — The Office AI Program, Security, and the Benches

  • §6 The One-Page AI Program — the Course's Deliverable
  • §7 Security — the Adversary Also Has the Tools
  • §8 The Practice Benches — AI in the Workflows
  • §9 Case Bench — Four Files
  • §10 Course Review and Close
  • §10.1 The Ninety-Day Adoption — Standing Up Governed AI Use
  • §10.2 Vendor Diligence — the Checklist, Worked
  • §10.3 Incident Response — When the Tool Is the Breach
  • §10.4 Rapid-Recall Bench
  • §10.5 The TAR and Review Protocol, Worked — AI in Discovery's Engine Room
  • §10.6 The Client-Counseling Bench — Four Advisory Files
  • §10.7 Supplement Drills
  • §10.8 Second Case Bench — Two Files at Full Complexity
  • §10.9 The Maintenance Schedule and the Catalog Connections
  • §10.10 Course Review — Ten Applications
  • §10.11 The One-Hour Staff Training — the Course Compressed for Delivery
  • §10.12 The Last Word — the Signature Was Always the Technology
  • §10.13 The Questionnaire Answer Pack — Carriers, Clients, and Courts in One File
  • §10.14 The Master Index — Every Artifact This Course Built, in Filing Order
  • §10.15 The Graduation Exercise — One Matter, Start to Finish, Every Gate Working

Sample from Part I

Part I — The Duties, Applied to AI and Legal Technology §1 The Frame — No New Rules, Every Old One California has not written an AI rulebook for lawyers, and the course's first teaching is that none was needed: every question generative AI raises in practice is answered by a duty the profession already owns, applied with technological literacy. Competence (Rule 1.1) reaches the benefits and risks of the technology the practice uses — the duty behind the MCLE technology hour this course maps. Confidentiality (section 6068(e) and Rule 1.6, California's strict version) governs what client information may touch which systems. Supervision (Rules 5.1 through 5.3) makes AI-assisted work reviewable work, whoever — or whatever — drafted it. Candor (the tribunal rules) prices fabricated authority, however generated. The fee rules govern billing when the machine compresses the hours. And the communication duty decides what clients are told. The State Bar's practical guidance on generative AI — issued in initial form in late 2023 and treated here at the framework level with this catalog's standing currency flags — organizes itself around exactly these duties, and the courts' own rule (10.430, effective December 15, 2025, requiring written AI policies in the courts that use it) confirms the direction: the profession's institutions are governing the technology with the instruments they already had. The course's method follows: each section takes one duty, states its AI application concretely, and ends with the artifact — because in this catalog, a duty without a document is a sentiment, and the Part II program assembles the documents into the office's standing system. §2 Competence — Verification as the Load-Bearing Skill The technology-competence duty has a generative-AI center of gravity: verification. The failure mode the profession has already litigated: fabricated citations — the sanctions cases, now numerous across jurisdictions, in which filings contained nonexistent authority produced by a model and signed by a lawyer who never checked; the sanctions, referrals, and publicity that followed established the era's first bright line, and its doctrinal basis is old — the certification a signature makes, the candor rules, and competence itself. The verification discipline, stated as office law: no AI-generated authority is cited until independently confirmed in a primary source; no AI-generated factual assertion enters a filing until verified against the record; no AI summary of a document substitutes for reading the document where the matter turns on it — the model is a drafting assistant with unlimited confidence and no oath, and the lawyer's oath is the difference. The affirmative competence: knowing what the tools do well (first drafts, reorganization, issue-spotting breadth, discovery triage, translation support subject to §5's limits) and badly (citations, quotation fidelity, arithmetic at the edges, recent law — every model's training has a date, which is this catalog's verify-doctrine wearing silicon); matching the tool to the task the way §2's ethics-course original matches lawyer to matter — acquire the skill, associate the specialist, or decline. And the currency habit: the tools change monthly; the office's approved-tool

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Course FAQ

What will AI and Technology in California Legal Practice cover?

The planned syllabus covers technology competence, confidentiality, supervision, and responsible AI use with California-specific explanations and practical applications.

Can I enroll now?

Enrollment opens only after the content status is PUBLISHED. Drafting pages offer a waitlist instead.

Publicly verifiable completion

After passing, the certificate PDF includes a unique certificate number, a random secure verification code, a record fingerprint, and a scannable QR link. The online record confirms the 101PD completion and preserves the distinction between training and regulator-approved credit.

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