What the law society actually says about using AI
Read the law society guidance on generative AI and one idea keeps coming back. The tool never becomes responsible for anything. You do.
The work stays yours
Put side by side, the documents land in the same place: you remain responsible for the work, as you are for work a junior or staff member prepares (our summary of each regulator's own words).
Alberta makes it concrete: "Treat any Gen AI output as a first draft only. Consider anything generated by Gen AI as being produced by a law student who requires supervision" (Law Society of Alberta).
Ontario says the checking cannot be handed back to the machine: "Always independently verify any information produced by generative AI that you intend to rely on. The verification process should be completed by a human being, not the AI system itself" (Law Society of Ontario).
And a court looks at the signature. The Federal Court's notice says the party signing a document submitted to the Court bears responsibility for the accuracy and veracity of its contents (Federal Court notice).
None of that is a reason to avoid AI. It describes who owns the result. A tool cannot answer to a judge, a client or a discipline panel. The lawyer who signs does. So the useful question about any AI tool is a simple one: does it keep you in the owner's seat?
The last click is yours, on purpose
Juris is built on the same idea, and it shows at the moment it matters most, when a draft is about to leave the office.
A draft stays a draft until you say otherwise. Export a Juris draft to PDF or Word before a lawyer has approved it and every page is stamped UNVERIFIED, with a banner saying it has not been reviewed by a lawyer and is not for filing or service until it is. The stamp comes off when you approve the draft, or when you confirm at export that you have checked it yourself.
Supervision is part of the workflow. A firm can flag a document for partner review. Until it is approved, Juris will not file it to the case or publish it to the client portal. That is the student and supervisor relationship Alberta describes, built into the software instead of left to memory.
Your review starts from a list. Juris checks the citations in its drafts against case-law databases and tells you which it could not find, so the time you spend verifying goes where it is needed.
The benefit is the one most lawyers want from AI: a faster first draft, with the last word still theirs.
A note on court declarations
If AI writes content into something you file, some courts require you to say so. The Federal Court's line is drawn at authorship: a Declaration is not required if AI was used to merely suggest changes, provide recommendations, or critique content already created by a human. Its notice also says that including a declaration will not, in and of itself, attract an adverse inference (Federal Court notice). Other courts and tribunals set their own rules, so check the practice directions of the body you appear before.
Try the checking part free
The citation checker at https://juris.kwatateam.com/verify needs no account. Paste a draft and it looks up each case citation in a case-law database and says plainly which it could not find. It does not tell you whether a case is still good law, so your own reading still comes first.
Every regulator in its own words, with a link to each document: AI rules for Canadian lawyers.
This is general information, not legal advice. Guidance changes, so open each source for its current version.
Sources
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