Arkansas: AI Ethics Guidance for Law Firms

Bottom line for a 5-50 attorney Arkansas firm: Two instruments adopted by the Arkansas Supreme Court on December 11, 2025 are in force: Administrative Order No. 25 (2025 Ark. 220) and amendments to the Preamble and Rule 5.3 of the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct (2025 Ark. 221). No Arkansas ethics opinion on AI has been located. The Arkansas Supreme Court reprimanded an attorney for AI-generated citations under its appellate Rule 11 in Ward (2026 Ark. 17), and the Committee on Professional Conduct then cautioned the same attorney under Rules 1.3 and 5.3(b). In the Western District, Hatfield v. Pirani produced a Rule 11 fine, conditions on future appearances, and a referral to the Office of Professional Conduct. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider a written AI use policy aligned to Rule 1.6, Rule 5.3, and Administrative Order No. 25, and a citation verification protocol.

Start with: a written AI use policy, a citation verification log for every filing, and training records covering attorneys and staff.

Arkansas Supreme Court AI order and rule amendments

Citation: In re Adoption of Arkansas Supreme Court Administrative Order No. 25. Artificial Intelligence, 2025 Ark. 220 (Dec. 11, 2025) (per curiam), published for comment in 2025 Ark. 117 (June 5, 2025); and In re Amendments to the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct, 2025 Ark. 221 (Dec. 11, 2025) (per curiam), published for comment in 2025 Ark. 115 (June 5, 2025).

Status: No numbered formal ethics opinion on AI has been located. The Arkansas Supreme Court adopted Administrative Order No. 25 and the Preamble and Rule 5.3 amendments on December 11, 2025, each effective immediately. Administrative Order No. 25 grew out of a subcommittee of the Supreme Court’s Committee on Automation that studied the use of AI in the courts. The rule amendments were unanimously recommended by the Arkansas Bar Association’s Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, which worked with that subcommittee, and were approved by the Supreme Court’s Committee on Civil Practice (2025 Ark. 115).

What the order and amendments say

• Administrative Order No. 25, Section 1 (“Awareness”), states that everyone participating in the court system “must be mindful” that certain generative AI tools retain submitted data. Anyone entering confidential or sealed information into a generative AI tool “should determine whether the system is retaining and using the confidential or sealed data.” Anyone who discloses confidential or sealed information related to a client or case, intentionally or inadvertently, “may be violating established rules,” with examples including Administrative Order No. 19, the Arkansas Code, the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct, the Arkansas Code of Judicial Conduct, and “the various applicable Rules of Procedure.”
• Section 2 prohibits Administrative Office of the Courts staff, all clerks of the courts and their staff, and “Anyone else with access to internal CourtConnect” from “intentionally exposing our state courts’ internal data to a GAI that is using a public LLM.” The order describes a public LLM as one “accessible to anyone and usually hosted by a third party.”
• Amended Rule 5.3, now titled “Responsibilities Regarding Nonlawyer Assistance,” requires partners and lawyers with comparable managerial authority to make reasonable efforts to ensure that the firm has measures giving reasonable assurance that nonlawyer assistance is compatible with the professional obligations of the lawyer, and requires a lawyer with direct supervisory authority over the nonlawyer assistance to make reasonable efforts to ensure that it is. A lawyer is responsible for nonlawyer assistance that would violate the rules if the lawyer orders or ratifies the use, or has managerial or supervisory authority, knows of the use in time to avoid or mitigate its consequences, and fails to take reasonable remedial action. A new comment states that “nonlawyer assistance” includes “services performed by human personnel and by technological tools such as generative artificial intelligence platforms.”
• New Preamble paragraph [22] states that nothing in the rules prohibits an attorney’s use of non-human assistance, including AI, but “the use of non-human assistance does not excuse or mitigate any violation of the rules that occurs from using such assistance.”

Notable gaps

Section 2 of Administrative Order No. 25 reaches only court staff, clerks, and others with internal CourtConnect access, and only the exposure of internal court data to a public generative AI tool. Section 1 addresses everyone in the court system, including lawyers, in awareness terms. Rule 1.6 remains the primary guardrail for client information generally. Rules 1.1, 1.6, and 3.3 were not amended in 2025 Ark. 221; they apply to AI use through their existing text. The Arkansas Supreme Court’s Office of Ethics Counsel, which gave lawyers informal ethics guidance, closed on August 1, 2023 (2023 Ark. 118). Firms seeking guidance on a specific AI use may wish to consult ethics counsel.

What federal courts in Arkansas require for AI use in filings

As of September 30, 2026, neither the Eastern District nor the Western District of Arkansas has a district-wide order or local rule addressing AI in filings, and neither does the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas. Their posted general orders, administrative orders, and joint Local Rules contain no AI provision, and no judge’s chambers page or posted forms page includes an AI order. Firms may wish to check the docket for case-specific orders at the opening of each federal matter. The operative federal default is Fed. R. Civ. P. 11, or Fed. R. Bankr. P. 9011 in bankruptcy.

Arkansas federal judges have addressed AI-generated citations case by case. In the Western District, Chief Judge Timothy L. Brooks imposed Rule 11 sanctions in Hatfield v. Pirani (see Notable enforcement). Eastern District matters in the tracker include Nguyen v. Savage Enterprises, Aponte v. Portfolio Recovery Associates, Magee v. New Balance Athletics, and, in the bankruptcy court, In re Whitehall Pharmacy.

What Arkansas state courts require for AI use in filings

Arkansas Supreme Court Administrative Order No. 25 is the operative state-court rule on AI and confidential or sealed court information. It does not require attorneys to disclose AI use in filings and imposes no certification comparable to some federal standing orders. Anyone subject to the Section 2 prohibition may ask the Supreme Court’s Automation Committee to approve a research and analysis project.

Separately, the Arkansas Supreme Court applied Ark. R. App. P. Civ. 11 to AI-generated citations in Ward (2025 Ark. 217; 2026 Ark. 17). The Court of Appeals has dismissed pro se appeals whose briefs cited nonexistent cases, including Hrdlichka v. Bengston, 2026 Ark. App. 205 and Williams v. Wogan Group, LLC, 2026 Ark. App. 439 (Sept. 23, 2026), where the court wrote that “none of the cases cited by appellant exist. They are fictitious, and the brief seems to be generated by artificial intelligence.” As of September 2026, no Arkansas circuit court has been identified as having an attorney-facing AI disclosure rule.

Has anyone been sanctioned for AI use in Arkansas?

Arkansas Department of Human Services v. Ward (Arkansas Supreme Court, December 2025 and February 2026)

On December 11, 2025, the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered attorney ad litem Dana McClain to show cause why sanctions should not be imposed under Ark. R. App. P. Civ. 11 (2025 Ark. 217, No. CV-25-758). Her response to the Department of Human Services’ expedited petition for writ of certiorari in a dependency-neglect matter contained citations to cases that could not be located and direct quotes from those purported cases, and cited a statute without noting that it had changed. The court required the full text of every opinion and statute cited and an affidavit explaining, among other things, the extent of her reliance on AI. It also said it was “gravely concerned” that confidential or sealed information about a juvenile may have been entered into a generative AI tool, citing Administrative Order No. 25.

On February 5, 2026, the court issued an order of reprimand (2026 Ark. 17). McClain admitted using Microsoft Office Copilot and affirmed that she did not upload any sealed juvenile records. She resigned as attorney ad litem and self-reported to the Office of Professional Conduct. The court found a Rule 11 violation and warned that under different facts “consequences could be more severe, including but not limited to significant fines and potentially a suspension or loss of the privilege to practice law in Arkansas.” On May 7, 2026, Panel B of the Committee on Professional Conduct cautioned McClain by consent and assessed $150 in costs (CPC-2026-011). It found violations of Rule 1.3, for failing “to proofread and verify the contents of her response,” and Rule 5.3(b), for using generative AI tools “that provided incorrect or non-existent case citations and quotations.” See the tracker entry.

Hatfield v. Pirani, No. 5:22-CV-5110 (W.D. Ark. 2025)

Tony Pirani, an attorney who was a defendant in this RICO and civil conspiracy action before Chief Judge Timothy L. Brooks, electronically signed and filed two motions in limine that contained citations to nonexistent cases and quotations of nonexistent caselaw passages. He admitted at the July 11, 2025 pretrial conference that he had used artificial intelligence to draft them, and the court struck both motions. In its December 3, 2025 Opinion and Order, the court imposed Rule 11 sanctions “in order to deter similar misconduct by Mr. Pirani as well as all other attorneys who practice in this District”: a $1,000 fine payable to the Clerk, no new appearances in the district until it is paid, two years of mandatory co-counsel on every appearance after that, and a referral to the Arkansas Judiciary’s Office of Professional Conduct. The same order awarded the plaintiff $1,578,172.50 in attorney fees and $93,388.40 in costs as the prevailing party under RICO. That fee award followed the jury verdict and is not an AI sanction; the court declined to add separate Rule 11 fees because they were “already encompassed within the lodestar calculation.” See the tracker entry.

What AI-related rules are pending in Arkansas?

As of September 30, 2026, no pending Arkansas Supreme Court rule amendment on AI has been identified; the court’s June 2026 civil-practice proposals do not address AI. No Arkansas ethics opinion on AI is publicly out for comment. SB 258 (Arkansas Digital Responsibility, Safety, and Trust Act), a consumer data-privacy bill, failed on third reading in the Senate in April 2025 and died on the Senate Calendar at sine die adjournment on 2025-05-05. The 2026 Fiscal Session and the First Extraordinary Session of 2026 enacted no act whose title addresses artificial intelligence.

Two enacted statutes touch firm operations rather than ethics. Act 159 of 2025 (HB 1071) amends the Frank Broyles Publicity Rights Protection Act of 2016 to protect an individual whose photograph, voice, or likeness is reproduced through artificial intelligence and used commercially, which reaches firm marketing content. Act 927 of 2025 (HB 1876), codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 18-4-101, provides that the person who provides the input or directive to a generative AI tool owns the generated content, “provided that the content does not infringe on existing copyrights or intellectual property rights.” The person who provides data to train a model owns the trained model if the training data is lawfully acquired and ownership has not been transferred by contract. Content an employee is directed to generate belongs to the employer when the use is within the scope of employment and under the employer’s direction and control. Neither act has an emergency clause, and according to the Bureau of Legislative Research, acts of the 2025 session without one took effect August 5, 2025.

How do malpractice carriers in Arkansas treat AI use?

No Arkansas-specific malpractice carrier bulletin on AI has been identified. Arkansas Insurance Department Bulletin 13-2024 (July 31, 2024), addressed to all insurers licensed in Arkansas, concerns insurers’ own use of AI systems and recognizes the NAIC’s 2020 Principles of Artificial Intelligence as “an appropriate source of guidance for Insurers.” It does not regulate law firms.

What does my Arkansas malpractice carrier ask about AI at renewal?

No Arkansas carrier has published AI-specific application items in materials reviewed for this entry. The Arkansas authorities most relevant to a firm’s AI documentation are Administrative Order No. 25 and the amended Rule 5.3 and Preamble, with ABA Formal Opinion 512 (July 2024) as a national reference where no Arkansas ethics opinion exists. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider keeping five items on file. First, a written AI use policy. Second, a citation verification log for every filing. Third, vendor due-diligence records for each AI tool in use. Fourth, a supervision and review log tied to the amended Rule 5.3. Fifth, an incident response protocol covering Rule 3.3 duty-to-correct, Rule 1.4 client notification, and Rule 8.3 self-reporting analysis. Confirm application items directly with your broker.

What documentation should a Arkansas firm keep on file?

Month one (foundational)

1. (Owner: managing partner + firm administrator) Written AI use policy naming approved tools, restricted inputs (confidential or sealed information, see Administrative Order No. 25, Section 1; client confidential information per Rule 1.6), the citation verification protocol, and the responsibility matrix for review of AI-generated work product. Distribute to all firm personnel including non-lawyer staff.
2. (Owner: litigation lead) Citation verification checklist or log for every filing. Every case citation, statutory citation, and regulatory reference verified against a primary source before submission. Addresses the conduct at issue in Ward and Hatfield v. Pirani.
3. (Owner: firm administrator) Training records showing attorneys and staff understand AI limitations and firm policy, including the amended Rule 5.3 supervisory responsibility.

Months two and three (operational documentation)

1. (Owner: firm administrator + outside IT) Vendor due diligence records for each AI tool in use: data handling terms, whether the tool retains client inputs for training, encryption posture, and whether vendor terms satisfy Rule 1.6. Obtain a data processing agreement or vendor security addendum where available.
2. (Owner: managing partner) Supervision and review log documenting that a licensed attorney reviews and verifies all AI-generated work product before it reaches a client, court, or opposing party. Amended Rule 5.3 and its new comment treat generative AI tools as nonlawyer assistance subject to the lawyer’s supervisory duties.
3. (Owner: managing partner + billing partner) Engagement letter provisions addressing AI use, including that client confidential information will not be shared with AI platforms that retain data for training without client consent.

Months four to six (per-matter discipline)

These are recurring practices, not one-time projects: each new matter exercises them.

1. (Owner: matter lead attorney) Client confidentiality screening before inputting any matter-specific information into an AI tool: confirm the information is not confidential or sealed (see Administrative Order No. 25) and is not subject to a protective order, confirm the client has not contractually restricted AI use, and confirm the tool is on the firm’s approved list.
2. (Owner: matter lead attorney) Incident response protocol for any AI-generated hallucination or error that reaches a court or client, covering Rule 3.3 duty-to-correct, Rule 1.4 client notification, and Rule 8.3 self-reporting analysis. In Ward, the Arkansas Supreme Court described its sanction as appropriate “considering the specific remedial actions taken voluntarily in this case and the fact that the harm was mitigated due to the early discovery of the errors,” and counted the attorney’s self-report to the Office of Professional Conduct as part of the sanction.

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