Illinois Supreme Court — AI Policy for the Judicial Branch

Illinois adopted what is now recognized as the "responsibility, not disclosure" model: judges, court staff, and attorneys may use generative AI, but the user remains personally accountable for the accuracy of every output and must comply with confidentiality obligations. The Court declined to require affirmative disclosure of AI use in court filings.

Core principles

• User accountability. Every person who relies on AI output owns the accuracy of that output. The tool is never a defense.
• Confidentiality discipline. Client confidences and court-confidential material may not be entered into AI services that do not contractually protect them.
• Competence. Users must understand the AI tools they deploy well enough to identify failure modes.
• No mandatory disclosure. The Court reasoned that imposing disclosure risks penalizing routine drafting assistance that no one would expect to flag, while the underlying duties (candor, competence, supervision) already address misconduct.

Why the no-disclosure choice matters

The Illinois policy stands in deliberate contrast to federal standing orders (Starr, Baylson) and to the withdrawn Fifth Circuit proposal. The Court's reasoning: the Rules of Professional Conduct already require competence, candor, and verification. A disclosure rule on top of those duties either duplicates existing obligations or penalizes users for normal drafting practices that produce no harm.

Cross-jurisdictional lesson for Ohio

Ohio's task force reached a similar conclusion — it recommended that the Supreme Court of Ohio decline to adopt a statewide disclosure rule, instead permitting individual judges to address disclosure in standing orders. Read alongside Illinois, the pattern is clear: large state systems are converging on responsibility over disclosure.

Practitioner takeaways

• Document your verification workflow. The absence of a disclosure rule is not a relaxation of the verification duty — it is a tightening.
• Check each judge's standing order before filing in Illinois federal courts; individual federal judges have not aligned to the state Supreme Court's position.
• For Ohio attorneys, Illinois is the closest analog — track its enforcement decisions for predictive value.

Source policy text and updates are available at the link above.