SB 574: what changes on January 1, 2027 for citations and AI in a California filing

SB 574 (Umberg) was chaptered on September 30, 2026, as Stats. 2026, ch. 858. It adds Bus. & Prof. Code 6068.1, amends CCP 128.7, adds CCP 180 and CCP 1282.1, and amends the State Bar's dispute resolution certification statute, Bus. & Prof. Code 6173. None of it applies before January 1, 2027.

Two provisions change how a litigator works. Section 6068.1 says what an attorney who uses generative AI must do. Section 128.7 now says what a filed paper may not contain. They overlap on citations and hold them to different standards, so read them together.

Every citation, whatever its source

The new paragraph is a citation rule. Generative AI is named in it as one source among many.

That is CCP 128.7(b)(2)(A). The word doing the work is any. A citation pasted from last year's brief, a form file, a colleague's memo or a treatise footnote is covered on the same terms as one a chatbot produced. "Including" puts AI on the list without taking anything else off it.

The sentence comes from Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. (2025) 114 Cal.App.5th 426, 431, where the Second District said no paper "should contain any citations ... that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified." The Senate floor analysis of the final bill, dated September 16, 2026, says the bill draws on Noland's ruling on verifying citations, and it still describes the rule as "personally read and verified." The enacted text says "shall" where Noland said "should," and "personally verified" without "read and."

Do not read the missing words as permission to verify without reading. Bus. & Prof. Code 6068.1(a)(3)(B)(i) separately requires reasonable steps to verify "the accuracy of all case and statutory citations" in AI output, and Noland at 445 calls it "a fundamental duty of attorneys to read the legal authorities they cite in appellate briefs or any other court filings to determine that the authorities stand for the propositions for which they are cited." A citator check confirms that a case exists and is still good law. It does not confirm that the case holds what the sentence citing it says.

The standard changed too. Subdivision (b)(1) still certifies the four familiar conditions "formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances." Paragraph (2) carries no reasonableness language. It asks one question: did an attorney responsible for the paper personally verify the citation.

Who counts is less clear. "An attorney responsible for submitting the pleading" is not defined, and it says pleading although the paragraph reaches briefs and motions. On its face it requires an attorney, so a paralegal's or law clerk's check does not satisfy it. Whether every attorney on the caption must verify, or one is enough, the text does not say.

Two 2026 decisions answer the practical version under the law as it stood before SB 574. Quinteros v. Harbor Distributing, LLC (2026) 121 Cal.App.5th 60, 78-80 affirmed sanctions imposed on the court's own motion under section 128.7 against a firm and its attorneys of record, for an opposition a contract attorney drafted. In Southland Homes & Real Estate & Investment, LLC v. Lam (Super. Ct. Orange County, App. Div., Aug. 4, 2026, No. 30-2026-01569207) 2026 WL 2665325, *4, the appellate division sanctioned a supervising attorney listed as counsel of record $2,500. He had reviewed an associate's arguments but not the citations, and the court rejected his reliance on the associate. The safe practice is that the attorney who signs is the attorney who read every case, or can name the attorney who did.

One limit carries over. CCP 128.7(g) says the section "shall not apply to disclosures and discovery requests, responses, objections, and motions." The new paragraph is part of the section, so the citations in a motion to compel are outside it. Section 6068.1 has no discovery exception, and the duty in Bus. & Prof. Code 6068(d) never to mislead a judge "by an artifice or false statement of fact or law" applies whatever the paper is.

Who pays: the cross-reference that now points elsewhere

Subdivision (d)(1) was not amended. The paragraph it names was.

Through December 31, 2026, CCP 128.7(d)(1) reads: "Monetary sanctions may not be awarded against a represented party for a violation of paragraph (2) of subdivision (b)." Paragraph (2) is the legal contentions certification, so a represented client cannot be ordered to pay for a frivolous legal argument its lawyer made.

SB 574 renumbered subdivision (b). The four certifications became (b)(1)(A) through (D), with legal contentions at (b)(1)(B), and the citation rule became (b)(2). Subdivision (d)(1) kept its words.

Read as written, the 2027 text has two effects. It bars monetary sanctions against a represented party for an unverified citation, which matches where the fault lies; CCP 128.7(c)(1) already holds a law firm "jointly responsible for violations committed by its partners, associates, and employees" absent exceptional circumstances. And it no longer mentions legal contentions, so the express bar a represented client had against paying for one is gone from the text.

Nothing in the Senate floor analysis of the final bill mentions (d)(1). No court has construed the new text, and none can before 2027. Until one does, a motion seeking money from a represented party on a legal contentions theory has a text argument it did not have in 2026, and the party opposing it has an argument from purpose with no authority behind it yet.

Disclosing AI use to the court

The statute says disclose, to the court, for all documents submitted. That is all it says.

That is Bus. & Prof. Code 6068.1(a)(3)(C), the last of three duties of an attorney who uses generative AI "to assist in the practice of law." No statewide statute or rule of court required attorney disclosure before it. Its second half borrows the courts' own language: Standard 10.80(b)(5) asks a judicial officer to "consider whether to disclose" AI used to create public content, and Cal. Rules of Court, rule 10.430(d)(5) requires court policies to mandate disclosure only when a public work "consists entirely of generative AI outputs." The first half has no counterpart for judges. Attorneys now owe the court more disclosure than the courts' own rules require of themselves.

What counts as use. The trigger is an attorney who "uses generative artificial intelligence to assist in the practice of law." The definition in Bus. & Prof. Code 6068.1(b)(1) turns on what a system can do: one "that can generate derived synthetic content, including text, images, video, and audio that emulates the structure and characteristics of the system's training data." On its face that reaches generative features inside research platforms and word processors as well as a standalone chatbot. It draws no line by how much of the document the tool wrote.

Which documents. "For all documents submitted to the court" reads most naturally as each document in whose preparation AI was used. It could also be read as every document submitted by an attorney who uses AI at all. The text does not choose.

What the disclosure says, and where. No rule of court or Judicial Council form implements it. CCP 180 directs the Judicial Council to revisit Standard 10.80, which governs judicial officers, and says nothing about a rule for attorneys. The subparagraph requires disclosing "the use." It does not require naming the tool, producing prompts or outputs, or marking which passages the tool wrote. Rule 10.430(d)(5), by contrast, makes a court's own public disclosure describe how AI was used and identify the system.

What happens if you skip it. A missed disclosure is not a 128.7 violation, because the new paragraph in 128.7 is about citations. Section 6068.1 has no sanction of its own. It sits in the State Bar Act, where Bus. & Prof. Code 6103 makes a violation of an attorney's "duties as such attorney" a cause for disbarment or suspension. That is the route the statute supplies.

Until a rule fills the gap, use one wording on every filing. A sentence above the signature block stating that generative AI was used in preparing the document, and that the signing attorney personally verified every citation in it, discloses the use and states the 128.7(b)(2) point in words the court can read. Neither statute requires the second clause.

What you can put into the tool

The test is who can reach what you type, whoever makes the tool.

That is Bus. & Prof. Code 6068.1(a)(3)(A). It turns on access. If anyone beyond you and the people you authorized, who are bound to keep the information confidential, can reach what you enter, the information stays out. Read the tool's terms with that sentence beside them and answer two questions: who can see the inputs, and under what obligation.

"Personal identifying information" is defined in Bus. & Prof. Code 6068.1(b)(2), and the list is lifted from rule 10.430(d)(1): driver's license numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, criminal identification numbers, "addresses and phone numbers of parties, victims, witnesses, and court personnel," medical or psychiatric information, financial information, account numbers, and anything sealed by court order or deemed confidential by court rule or statute. A witness list, a medical records summary and a damages spreadsheet each fall inside it.

The courts' rule differs in one respect. Rule 10.430(a)(4) defines a "public generative AI system" to include one that lets others use court inputs "to train AI systems." Section 6068.1 uses no such definition and does not mention training. Whether a provider that trains on inputs gives "access" to anyone is a question the text leaves open.

The duty sits alongside the existing one in Bus. & Prof. Code 6068(e)(1), "to maintain inviolate the confidence" of the client. Subdivisions (a)(1) and (a)(2) of section 6068.1 frame the rest: nothing in the section abrogates the duty of reasonable competence and diligence, and an attorney "shall not delegate the practice of law to generative artificial intelligence." Neither phrase is defined. For citations, Noland at 446 already supplies the working version of the second: "Attorneys cannot delegate that role to AI, computers, robots, or any other form of technology."

If the case is in arbitration

The arbitrator gets two rules of its own, and they sit where a petition to vacate can reach them.

That is CCP 1282.1(b), and subdivision (a) keeps the arbitrator's duty of neutrality and of reasonable competence and diligence intact. The section is in the California Arbitration Act, Title 9 of Part 3 of the Code of Civil Procedure, so it governs the arbitrations that act governs.

The placement matters at the end of the case. CCP 1286.2(a)(5) requires vacatur where a party's rights "were substantially prejudiced by ... other conduct of the arbitrators contrary to the provisions of this title." A 1282.1 violation is conduct contrary to a provision of that title. Whether a court will vacate on it, and what prejudice looks like, is undecided. Separately, CCP 1286.2(b) makes a petition to vacate subject to section 128.7, citation rule included.

The practical step comes early. Ask at the preliminary hearing whether the arbitrator uses generative AI and how, and get the answer into the scheduling order.

The local layer

Everything above is statewide, and in the three counties this site covers in depth the statewide rule is so far the whole of it.

San Diego. The local rules effective January 1, 2026 contain no generative AI provision. A full-text search of the published rules for "artificial intelligence" and "generative" returns nothing. Department standing orders were not checked, so read your department's before the first 2027 filing.

Riverside and San Bernardino. Same result in both sets of local rules effective July 1, 2026.

Everywhere else, the statewide rule is the rule. This site does not guess at a department's practice in a county it does not cover, and stops here.