Hamilton County, Ohio (county-wide common pleas, including Commercial Docket): Hamilton C…
Adopted en banc by the judges of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas · Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati)
Verified May 8, 2026
- Citation
- Hamilton County (Ohio) Court of Common Pleas Local Rule 49: Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools
- Order date
- May 21, 2024
Summary
Attorneys and parties must disclose the use of AI-assisted technology in the creation or editing of any document or evidence submitted to the court.
What does the order require?
- Attorneys and parties must disclose the use of AI-assisted technology in the creation or editing of any document or evidence submitted to the court.
- Disclosure must include a general description of the AI technology used and its role in the preparation of the materials.
- The disclosure must be made at the time of submission through a certification attached to the document or evidence, indicating the type of AI used and certifying the attorney's final review and approval of the AI-assisted material.
- Attorneys and parties remain ultimately responsible for the accuracy, relevance, and appropriateness of AI-assisted materials; use of AI does not absolve attorneys of the duties of competence, diligence, and supervision under the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct.
- Violations may subject an attorney or party to sanctions, including under Civil Rule 11 and Civil Rule 37.
Practice areas: state civil, state criminal, state family, state probate, business
What the rule requires
Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas (Cincinnati) Local Rule 49 took effect May 21, 2024 and is now consolidated in the court’s Local Rules Book (effective October 9, 2025) at pages 92-93. It is a county-wide rule applying to all Common Pleas matters: civil, criminal, domestic relations, probate, juvenile, and the court’s specialty Commercial Docket alike.
The rule defines AI broadly: “machine learning, natural language processing, or any other computational mechanism.” Its operative provisions are:
- Disclosure (subsection C). Any AI-assisted technology used in creating or editing any document or evidence must be disclosed at submission via a certification, identifying the type of AI used and certifying the attorney’s final review and approval.
- Continued attorney responsibility (subsection D). AI assistance does not displace the duty of competence, diligence, and supervision under the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct.
- Sanctions (subsection E). Violations may trigger Ohio Civil Rule 11 sanctions and/or Ohio Civil Rule 37 (discovery sanctions).
Why this matters beyond Hamilton County
The rule is among the few Ohio county-level AI rules binding attorney filings (alongside Judges Boyko of N.D. Ohio and Newman of S.D. Ohio in our tracker, both federal). Cuyahoga, Franklin, and Lucas County Courts of Common Pleas have not adopted parallel rules as of this research.
For practitioners with Hamilton County dockets (Cincinnati commercial litigation, family law, probate, criminal), this is the operative AI rule. The Commercial Docket (operating under Ohio Sup.R. 49) does not have a separate division-level AI rule; Local Rule 49 applies.
Practitioner workflow
Brief templates for Hamilton County matters need an AI-disclosure-and-certification block. The certification must identify the specific AI tool used (similar to the Florida 17th, Florida 15th, and S.D. Cal. Bankruptcy GO 210 requirements) and attest to attorney final review and approval.
Primary source
Hamilton County local rules landing page: https://hamiltoncountycourts.org/index.php/local-rules/
Local Rules Book (Rule 49 at pp. 92-93), Wayback snapshot 2025-12-21: https://web.archive.org/web/20251221044712/https://hamiltoncountycourts.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Local-Rules-Book-Version-Effective-10-9-25.pdf
Standalone Rule 49 PDF (proposed-rule version), Wayback snapshot 2024-12-03: https://web.archive.org/web/20241203002219/https://hamiltoncountycourts.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Local-Rule-49-AI.pdf
Note: the canonical Hamilton County PDF paths these archives capture currently return HTTP 404 (the courts website’s local-rules landing page links to PDFs the server no longer hosts). The Wayback snapshots are used as primary-equivalent archives until Hamilton County restores the underlying files.