Israel Bar Association bars AI agents from making legal decisions
The national ethics committee of the Israel Bar Association published a new opinion on artificial intelligence on Thursday, September 17. Its central rule is blunt: lawyers may not let autonomous systems or AI agents make substantive legal decisions. It is the committee's second opinion on the subject. The first, a preliminary opinion, came out in 2024, and the new one is stricter.
The opinion covers Israel's roughly 100,000 lawyers. Many of them run a small office or practise alone, with no IT department and no privacy adviser, and AI tools reach their daily work faster than any internal policy does.
Chatbot versus agent
The opinion was written in response to a change in the tools themselves. A chatbot answers a question. An AI agent, as the opinion defines it, is a system that operates with some degree of autonomy: it plans a sequence of work, picks tools and interacts with outside systems without a human stepping in.
Such an agent may not give legal advice on its own, draft pleadings or move a proceeding forward without close human supervision, or handle confidential information without tight oversight. The background is familiar. Lawyers have filed documents in court citing rulings that do not exist, invented by the software and never checked.
Still permitted
The opinion leaves room for AI and allows technical actions that are bounded, documented and reversible, carried out under a human decision made beforehand, with clear parameters and human control. In practice, a lawyer who decides what to ask for and checks the result can keep using the tools. What is banned is handing the decision itself to the tool.
Every output gets checked by the lawyer. The committee writes that a lawyer may not hide behind AI output, and the personal, direct responsibility stays with them.
Client data and open platforms
This is the biggest practical change. Confidential client information does not go into an open AI platform without the client's informed, explicit, advance consent. The committee rules that removing names is not enough, because cross-referencing data can identify the client without them.
A closed tool is no exemption from checking either. The lawyer has to confirm what the vendor contract says about data protection, and limit access to the information inside the office too.
When the client must be told
The opinion lists situations in which the client has to be told about AI use: when it materially affects how the representation is run, when confidential information goes into an open platform, when the client asks, when the client has restricted such use, and when it affects the fee.
A general clause in the fee agreement permitting "use of AI tools" is not enough, according to the committee. Anyone who put such a clause into a standard agreement and relied on it should go back over the agreement.
The solo practitioner
The opinion states that failing to comply creates a rebuttable presumption of an ethics breach. Compliance is significant evidence of reasonable conduct, but not immunity, and each case is judged on its facts. For a lawyer working alone, the upshot is to keep records: which tool, for which task, what was checked and when consent was given. Records like that are what will stand behind them if a complaint is filed.
Three steps follow directly from the text. Check which tools in the office act as agents, meaning they carry out actions without approval for each step, and narrow them to technical, reversible tasks. Stop uploading client documents to an open tool until there is explicit written consent. And rewrite the fee agreement clause so it describes the actual use.
When your business is the client
A business owner who retains a lawyer gains a right to ask. You can ask whether a contract, a demand letter or a statement of claim was drafted with AI, and which platform your business's information passed through. If the use affects the fee, the lawyer has to tell you. And if your business does not want its documents in an open tool, saying so in writing is enough. A client who has restricted such use is on the list of cases where the lawyer must disclose.