Your Paralegal Checked the AI. Did You?
The brief was due, and the lawyer was in court. Between recesses, he added new quotations to the brief. An AI tool had helped draft…
The brief was due, and the lawyer was in court. Between recesses, he added new quotations to the brief. An AI tool had helped draft them.
He asked his paralegal to check the quotations. She had already checked an earlier draft.
A short exchange followed. She walked away believing he had already verified the new additions. He walked away believing she had checked everything.
Each of them thought the other one checked. The brief went out with quotations that do not exist.
The court sanctioned the lawyer. Then it said the part every supervising attorney should read twice. The plan itself was the problem. It would have been a problem even if it had worked.
You likely assume your firm’s verification rule protects you. So did this firm. Now move that handoff to your closing file.
A Georgia lawyer cannot hand off the duty to verify AI output to a paralegal. In July 2026, a California appellate court sanctioned a lawyer who did exactly that, and held the delegation itself was inappropriate. On a Georgia closing file, the stakes are higher, because only a licensed Georgia attorney may prepare a deed or close the transaction.
Prefer to watch? Here’s the full breakdown.
What happened in Del Biaggio v. Bansen?
In Del Biaggio v. Bansen (Cal. Ct. App. 2026), a California appellate court sanctioned a lawyer $1,500 after a brief contained fictitious quotations. The lawyer had asked his paralegal to verify AI-assisted quotations. She believed he had already done it. The court held the plan was inappropriate even if it had not gone awry.
The firm was not careless on paper. It had a protocol requiring human verification of AI output against primary sources. The protocol did not save it.
The court put the point in one sentence: “This plan would have been inappropriate even if it had not gone awry.” The court also directed its clerk to forward the opinion to the State Bar.
This is a California decision. It does not bind Georgia courts. It does show how a court reads a verification handoff, and that reading travels.
Can a Georgia lawyer delegate AI verification to a paralegal?
A Georgia lawyer may delegate tasks to staff, but not responsibility for the result. GRPC 5.3 makes the lawyer answerable for nonlawyer assistance. The State Bar of Georgia Generative AI Toolkit treats AI itself as nonlawyer assistance. That creates two layers of supervision on every AI-assisted task: the tool and the person running it.
Four Georgia anchors and one national one frame the duty:
- GRPC 5.3. A lawyer is responsible for a nonlawyer’s conduct that the lawyer orders or ratifies.
- Georgia Formal Advisory Opinion 24-1 (2026). The Supreme Court of Georgia approved an opinion confirming a lawyer must keep the right and ability to supervise anyone who assists in a matter, including outside vendors. The opinion does not mention AI. The same supervision principle applies.
- The State Bar of Georgia Generative AI Toolkit. It treats AI as a nonlawyer assistant under Rule 5.3. It calls on firms to adopt policies and train both lawyers and non-lawyers.
- O.C.G.A. § 15-19-54. Clerical services may be furnished to a lawyer only if the lawyer keeps full professional and direct responsibility for them.
- ABA Formal Opinion 512. Managerial lawyers must set clear firm policies on permissible AI use and train nonlawyers on its risks. This is national guidance. It does not bind Georgia.
Read together, the rule is simple. Your paralegal can run the tool. Your paralegal cannot carry your duty.
Why does this matter more on a Georgia closing file?
Georgia treats the real estate closing itself as the practice of law. The Supreme Court of Georgia has held that only a licensed Georgia attorney may prepare or facilitate the execution of a deed, and that a lawyer cannot delegate responsibility for the closing to a nonlawyer. An unverified AI handoff on a closing file is a supervision failure inside attorney-only work.
The Court’s words in In re UPL Advisory Opinion 2003-2 (Ga. 2003) are direct. “Only a licensed Georgia attorney may prepare or facilitate the execution of a deed of conveyance.” And “a lawyer cannot delegate responsibility for the closing of a real estate transaction to a non-lawyer.”
The Code draws the same line:
- O.C.G.A. § 15-19-50. The practice of law includes conveyancing, preparing legal instruments, rendering opinions on title, and giving legal advice.
- O.C.G.A. § 15-19-53. Nonattorneys may examine title records and prepare abstracts. Only an attorney may issue an opinion on title status.
I have spent 20+ years in real estate finance law. Closing files rarely break on the hard tasks. The handoff that gets missed is the one everyone assumed someone else owned.
I have seen how close that gets. On one closing, the lender’s instructions required the buyer’s funds to come from a specific bank account. The buyer brought a cashier’s check drawn on a different account.
I caught the mismatch on one final read of the lender’s instructions, just before I sent the wire. I notified the lender, and the lender called off the closing. The buyer was a suspected fraudster.
That final read was mine to do. No assistant and no tool could have carried it for me. They still can’t.
Which closing-file tasks can staff run through AI?
Sort every closing-file task into three groups. Staff may run low-risk clerical tasks with an approved AI tool under supervision. Anything touching title, the settlement statement, the survey, or the deed needs attorney review and sign-off. Legal advice to clients stays with the attorney, with no AI shortcut. Save this table for your file.
| Closing-file task | Who may use AI | Attorney’s role | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drafting a closing checklist | Staff, with an approved tool | Supervises | § 15-19-54 |
| Extracting dates and deadlines from the purchase agreement | Staff, with an approved tool | Staff checks each date against the contract; attorney confirms critical deadlines | § 15-19-54 |
| Summarizing a title commitment | Staff, as an internal aid only | Attorney reviews; any conclusion on title is the attorney’s | § 15-19-50(4); § 15-19-53 |
| Comparing the settlement statement to the contract | AI may flag mismatches | Attorney review and final sign-off required | Lawyer cannot delegate the closing (UPL Op. 2003-2) |
| Reviewing a survey | AI may list what the survey shows | Attorney must review | § 15-19-50(4) |
| Borrower correspondence: scheduling, document lists | Staff, with an approved tool | Supervises | § 15-19-54 |
| Borrower correspondence: anything resembling legal advice | Attorney only | Attorney drafts or adopts every word | § 15-19-50(5) |
| Answering client questions about loan terms | Attorney only | Attorney answers | § 15-19-50(5) |
| Preparing the deed | Attorney, or staff drafting for the attorney | Attorney review and adoption specifically required | UPL Op. 2003-2; § 15-19-50(2), (3) |
| Conducting the closing | Not delegable | Attorney controls the closing | UPL Op. 2003-2 |
No Georgia authority addresses AI reconciliation or survey tools specifically. These placements reflect the attorney-only nature of the underlying work.
Are Georgia courts already requiring AI disclosure?
Some Georgia courts now require it by local order. In October 2026, Cherokee County judges began requiring anyone who uses AI on a court filing to disclose it and certify that the citations were checked. Coweta County and a DeKalb Superior Court division have similar orders. These are local orders, not a statewide rule.
Notice whose name sits on a filing. The attorney signs it. The staff member who ran the tool does not.
That brings you straight back to Del Biaggio. A certification that citations were checked is only as good as the person who checked them. If that person was not you, your signature is a promise you cannot keep.
What does this failure look like on a Georgia closing file?
The illustrative case file below is a composite. The firm is invented. The pattern is not.
Friday, 4:10 p.m. A Georgia firm has a residential purchase closing Monday morning. The processor runs the settlement statement and the contract through the firm’s AI tool. It flags no mismatches. She initials the checklist line “SS reconciled.”
The attorney sees her initials and moves on. He assumes she checked the tool’s work. She assumes the tool’s “no issues” was the check.
The tool never received the addendum. Page 9 of that addendum carries a seller credit.
Monday, at the closing table, the borrower asks why the credit is missing. Nobody can say who verified the figures. Nobody did.
This firm is not real. The handoff is.
Does your firm have the Del Biaggio gap?
Answer five yes-or-no questions honestly. They test whether your verification rule has an owner, or only a name. A firm can pass a policy audit and still fail this check. Any “No” on question 1 or 2 means your firm has the Del Biaggio gap.
- Does every AI-assisted closing task have a named person responsible for verifying it?
- Is that person the attorney for every task on the attorney-review list?
- Does the file show who verified what, and when?
- Do staff use only firm-approved AI tools, with no client data in personal accounts?
- Has every staff member been trained on the firm’s AI policy in the last 12 months?
How do you close the gap in three steps?
You close the gap by assigning verification by task, documenting every review, and binding staff to a written AI policy. Each step answers a failure in the Del Biaggio handoff. None of them requires new software. All of them require the supervising attorney to own the result.
- Assign the verifier by task, in writing. Use the task table above. Staff never verify attorney-review tasks.
- Document the review. Record initials, the date, and what was checked against what. “We always check” is not evidence.
- Adopt a written AI policy that binds staff. Approve specific tools. Keep client data out of personal accounts. Train annually under a named policy owner.
What separates an ungoverned firm from a governed one?
The difference is ownership. An ungoverned firm relies on the assumption that someone checked. A governed firm names the verifier, records the review, and keeps attorney-only work with the attorney. The table below compares the two approaches at each decision point on a closing file.
| Decision point | Wild West | Governance Way |
|---|---|---|
| Who verifies AI output | “Someone checked it” | Named verifier per task, attorney for every attorney-review task |
| The paralegal’s role | Final check on AI work | Runs the tool and flags issues; the attorney decides |
| The file | Initials with no detail | Who checked, what against what, and when |
| Tools | Whatever staff already use | Approved list; no client data in personal accounts |
| The settlement statement | “AI says it matches” | Attorney review and final sign-off |
| The deed | Template plus AI, out the door | Attorney review and adoption |
| Training | None | Annual, with a named policy owner |
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my paralegal use AI on a Georgia closing file?
Yes, for clerical tasks with a firm-approved tool and under your supervision. O.C.G.A. § 15-19-54 requires you to keep full professional and direct responsibility for that work. Title conclusions, settlement statement sign-off, the deed, and the closing itself stay with the attorney.
If my paralegal checks the AI’s citations, have I met my duty?
Not by itself. In Del Biaggio v. Bansen (Cal. Ct. App. 2026), a court held that handing verification to a paralegal was inappropriate even if it had worked. Georgia’s GRPC 5.3 likewise keeps the lawyer responsible for nonlawyer work the lawyer orders or ratifies.
Can AI prepare a deed in Georgia?
AI may assist with drafting, but the deed is attorney work. In In re UPL Advisory Opinion 2003-2 (Ga. 2003), the Supreme Court of Georgia held that only a licensed Georgia attorney may prepare or facilitate the execution of a deed of conveyance. The attorney must review and adopt any AI-assisted draft.
Do Georgia courts require AI disclosure on filings?
Some do, by local order. Cherokee County judges began requiring anyone who uses AI on a court filing to disclose it and certify that the citations were checked. Coweta County and a DeKalb Superior Court division have similar orders, but Georgia has no statewide rule.
Does Georgia’s Formal Advisory Opinion 24-1 apply to AI tools?
The opinion does not mention AI. It confirms that a lawyer must keep the right and ability to supervise anyone who assists in a matter, including outside vendors. The same supervision principle applies to AI tools and the staff who run them.
Does the State Bar of Georgia treat AI as a nonlawyer assistant?
Yes. The State Bar of Georgia Generative AI Toolkit treats AI as a nonlawyer assistant under Rule 5.3. Firms should adopt AI policies and train both lawyers and non-lawyers on them.
What is the bottom line?
A California appellate court held in 2026 that handing AI verification to a paralegal did not satisfy the lawyer’s own duty. In Georgia, where only a licensed attorney may prepare a deed or close a real estate transaction, that handoff lands inside attorney-only work.
Find out where your firm stands. Take the AI Liability Quiz and learn whether your practice is a Statutory Time Bomb, a Fragile Hybrid, or a Digital Fortress.
This article is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. It reflects authority available as of October 2026. Local court orders vary, so check the requirements of your specific court. Georgia attorneys should evaluate their own practices against the current Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct and current State Bar guidance.