Ohio Rules of Judicial Conduct — AI Commentary

The Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct predates generative AI by more than a decade. The Supreme Court of Ohio has not yet rewritten the Code for AI — instead, it has explained how the existing rules already reach AI use by judges, judicial officers, and chambers staff. This page summarizes that commentary.

Rules most directly implicated

Rule 1.2 — Promoting confidence in the judiciary

A judge must act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary. AI tools that draft opinions, summarize filings, or analyze evidence touch each of those values. The Court's position: a judge remains personally accountable for every product issued under the judge's name, regardless of how it was drafted.

Rule 2.5 — Competence, diligence, and cooperation

Competence now includes a baseline understanding of the AI tools a judge or chambers deploys — their accuracy limits, their data-handling practices, and their failure modes. A judge who cannot describe what their AI tool does and does not do is, the Court signals, not yet competent to use it.

Rule 2.9 — Ex parte communications

This is the rule that does the most surprising work in an AI context. An AI tool that retrieves outside material, summarizes facts the parties did not brief, or surfaces authority not in the record can implicate the prohibition on ex parte information about a pending matter. The commentary urges careful documentation of any AI-assisted research conducted on a pending case.

Rule 2.10 — Judicial statements on pending and impending cases

Public-facing AI demonstrations using real pending cases as input risk violating this rule. Hypotheticals and closed cases are the safer training ground.

Rule 2.12 — Supervisory duties

A judge is responsible for the conduct of chambers staff. If a law clerk uses generative AI to draft a bench memo, the judge must ensure the clerk verified citations, protected confidential information, and documented the workflow.

The "do not" list

The commentary articulates a short, blunt list of judicial AI uses to avoid:

• Do not enter sealed filings, in-camera material, or chambers deliberations into a public AI tool.
• Do not rely on AI-generated case citations without independent verification in an authoritative reporter or database.
• Do not delegate adjudicative judgment to an AI tool. The judge decides.
• Do not test AI tools on real pending cases without first considering ex parte and Rule 2.10 implications.

The "do" list

• Do build chambers protocols for AI use and write them down.
• Do log which tools are used and which versions, so issues can be traced.
• Do require human verification of every citation, factual claim, and statutory quote in any AI-touched draft.
• Do prefer enterprise or court-vetted tools over consumer chatbots for any judicial task.

Disclosure

The commentary does not require Ohio judges to disclose AI use in a published opinion as a matter of judicial conduct. Individual courts may, of course, adopt their own protocols. The Court's signal is that disclosure should track materiality: a typo-fixing pass need not be flagged; AI-assisted legal analysis that influenced the holding probably should be.

How this affects counsel

If you appear before an Ohio judge who is using AI tools in chambers, the practical consequences are: (1) your filings may be summarized for the judge by an AI tool — write so the summary is unlikely to mislead; (2) the judge may notice AI-generated hallucinations in your briefs more readily, not less; (3) standing orders on AI in pleadings are spreading and you should check each judge's docket page before filing.

The official commentary text and any updates are available at the source link above.