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California SB 574 passed and enrolled: what it would require of lawyers and arbitrators using AI

Passed 31 Aug and enrolled 4 Sep 2026, SB 574 would bar delegating law practice to AI, require citation checks and court disclosure, and bind arbitrators.

Edited and verified by Cognesio LLP

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In California, Senate Bill 574 passed both houses on 31 August 2026 and was enrolled on 4 September 2026; the next step is presentation to the Governor, which the Legislature’s history page did not yet record when this was written. It would add Section 6068.1 to the Business and Professions Code, setting out in statute what an attorney who uses generative artificial intelligence must and must not do, and amend the Code of Civil Procedure so that no paper filed in any California court may contain a citation the responsible attorney has not personally verified. Once the bill is presented, the Governor has until 30 September to act.

California’s SB 574, passed 31 August and enrolled 4 September 2026, would prohibit attorneys from delegating the practice of law to generative AI, bar entering confidential or personal identifying information into unrestricted AI systems, require verification of every AI-generated case and statutory citation, require disclosure of generative AI use to the court, and prohibit arbitrators from delegating decision-making to generative AI tools.

What the enrolled text says

Section 1 of the bill adds Business and Professions Code §6068.1. Its operative text, from the enrolled version on the Legislature’s site, reads in part:

(2) An attorney shall not delegate the practice of law to generative artificial intelligence. (3) An attorney who uses generative artificial intelligence to assist in the practice of law shall do all of the following: (A) Not enter confidential, personal identifying, and other nonpublic information into a generative artificial intelligence system for which access to confidential, personal identifying, or other nonpublic information the attorney inputs into the system is not restricted to the attorney and persons authorized by the attorney under obligations to protect the confidentiality of the information. (B) Take reasonable steps to do both of the following: (i) Verify the accuracy of generative artificial intelligence outputs, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of all case and statutory citations. (ii) Correct any erroneous or hallucinated output in any material used by the attorney. (C) Disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence to the court for all documents submitted to the court and consider whether to disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence if it is used to create content provided to the public.

Section 3 amends Code of Civil Procedure §128.7, the state’s signature-certification rule. It adds a new paragraph (b)(2)(A): “A brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court shall not contain any citations that an attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally verified, including any citation provided by generative artificial intelligence.” The existing sanction machinery in §128.7(c) would apply to a violation.

Section 5 adds Code of Civil Procedure §1282.1 for arbitration: “An arbitrator shall not delegate any part of their decisionmaking process to any generative artificial intelligence tool”, and an arbitrator “shall not rely on information generated by generative artificial intelligence outside the record without making appropriate disclosures to the parties beforehand and, as far as practical, allowing the parties to comment on its use.” Section 4 directs the Judicial Council to “publicly revisit, and revise as necessary” Standard 10.80 of the Standards of Judicial Administration, which covers generative AI in the courts.

The bill’s definition of generative artificial intelligence, used in all three sections, is “an artificial intelligence system that can generate derived synthetic content, including text, images, video, and audio that emulates the structure and characteristics of the system’s training data.”

Where it sits in the record

The verification duty SB 574 would write into statute already exists in California by other routes. The State Bar’s Practical Guidance for the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law (16 November 2023) tells lawyers to review all generative AI outputs, including citations, before submission to a court; the Judicial Council’s rule 10.430 and Standard 10.80 (both effective 1 September 2025) address courts’ and judicial officers’ use. California courts have sanctioned filings with fabricated citations under existing law, for example Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing LLC, where the court imposed $6,000 in sanctions (tracker record); the court-decisions corpus holds the passages from the California decisions it has read. What the bill changes is the source of the duty and its reach: a statute rather than guidance, and an express extension to arbitrators.

SB 574 is one of 41 bills and laws in SafeLegalAI’s register of US legislation on AI in courts, evidence and legal services, of which ten are in force as of 7 September 2026. Its nearest neighbours are Louisiana’s Act 250 of 2025, in force since 1 August 2025, which imposes a “reasonable diligence” duty on counsel regarding AI-manipulated evidence, and California’s own SB 524 on AI-drafted police reports, in force since 1 January 2026. The Legislature passed a related evidence bill, SB 11, in 2025; the Governor vetoed it on 13 October 2025 and the veto was sustained on 2 March 2026.

What to watch

Under article IV, section 10(b)(2) of the California Constitution, a bill passed before 1 September of the second year of the session and in the Governor’s possession on or after that date becomes a statute unless it is returned by 30 September; SB 574 passed on 31 August, so that rule will apply once it is presented. If SB 574 becomes law, article IV, section 8(c) puts its effective date at 1 January 2027, the bill having no urgency clause. The bill’s record page carries the status as of the date it was last read and will be updated when the Governor acts.

Record: California SB 574 (2025–26). All US legislation on AI in courts and legal services.

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