# What ABA Formal Opinion 512 Asks of a Law Firm

> The ABA's opinion on generative AI adds no new rules, but its fee section reaches every lawyer who bills by the hour, on every time entry. An hourly bill may carry only the minutes spent, and many lawyers still rebuild those minutes from memory.

By Vlad Shvets, Partner @ Qvery · Published 2026-11-08 · Updated 2026-11-09 · 12 min read
Canonical: https://qvery.ai/blog/aba-formal-opinion-512/

Lawyers who bill by the hour have a second job when the working day or week is over: reconstructing whatever they did not record as they went. The calendar shows the calls, the sent folder some of the emails, and memory fills in the rest, including the brief they drafted in between.

In July 2024 the American Bar Association's ethics committee applied the old hourly billing rule to AI.

Its Formal Opinion 512, the ABA's guidance on generative AI, says a lawyer who bills by the hour bills the time spent, AI-drafted work included: the minutes of instructions and the review, never the hour the draft used to take.

For a firm of about 200 people with 80 lawyers, a little under 15 minutes a day of it comes to **4,992 hours** of lawyer time a year spent on timekeeping, about **$547,440** of their pay and benefits.

> ⚖️ At Qvery, we help law firms give lawyers back the hours they lose to timekeeping and put them into client work, with custom AI agents that draft each lawyer's time entries from the day's calendar, email and documents, match each to its case or deal, and hold every entry for the lawyer's approval.

## Opinion 512 Applies the Rules Your Lawyers Already Follow

Each of the six rules leaves your firm a decision to make:

**ABA Formal Opinion 512 in plain English**

| The rule | What the opinion says | What your firm decides |
|---|---|---|
| Competence (Rule 1.1) | Know the tool's limits and check its output; the lawyer stays fully responsible | Which tools are approved, and how each kind of work gets checked |
| Confidentiality (Rule 1.6) | Client information goes into a learning tool only with informed consent, not boilerplate | Which tools see client information, and the consent wording |
| Telling clients (Rule 1.4) | Disclose AI use when asked, when billing guidelines require it, or when it affects the fee | What the engagement letter says about AI |
| Courts (Rules 3.1, 3.3 and 8.4(c)) | Check every output, citations included, before filing; follow local rules | Who checks a filing, and against what |
| Supervision (Rules 5.1 and 5.3) | Leaders set an AI policy, supervisors enforce it, everyone is trained, vendors are vetted | The policy, the training, and who owns them |
| Fees (Rule 1.5) | Bill the time spent; no charge for learning a tool; a practice-wide tool is overhead | How AI-assisted work shows up on the bill |

Most of that is policy that your management committee, or the partner who owns ethics and billing, sets once and keeps current: the approved tools, the consent wording, the training, the check before a filing.

The fee rule is different. It reaches every lawyer who bills by the hour, on every time entry, every day, and it is where the opinion touches the firm's revenue.

## An Hourly Bill Can Only Carry the Minutes Someone Recorded

> Lawyers who bill clients an hourly rate for time spent on a matter must bill for their actual time
>
> ABA Formal Opinion 512

The opinion's own example: a lawyer spends 15 minutes giving an AI tool what it needs to draft a pleading, a filing such as a complaint. They may bill those 15 minutes and the time spent reviewing the draft. They may not bill the hour a pleading like that used to take.

The rule is older than AI, and the opinion does not tell a firm how to keep time. What it worries about is a bill that carries more time than was worked, and AI widens the gap between what a task used to take and what it takes now.

A lawyer rebuilding Tuesday on Friday remembers that the pleading took most of the morning, because pleadings always did. This one took twenty minutes with an assistant and a careful read, and the entry written on Friday carries the old number.

A lawyer at a desk keeps time as they go; after a day in court they rebuild it from the sent folder, and the interruptions go missing either way. The sent folder also misses work that left no email behind, such as a day of drafting or research.

**What Reddit says**

> it takes much less time to enter as you go than to try to re-create a month worth of work in a couple of frenzied hours under pressure from the billing department.
> ([r/LawFirm · Nov 2025](https://www.reddit.com/r/LawFirm/comments/1op3vlr/what_are_you_firm_policies_for_time_entry/nn984fb/))

> losing 3-4 hours recreating my time every weekend was damaging my relationships with my kids and my spouse.
> ([r/Lawyertalk · Nov 2025](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lawyertalk/comments/1pas4ex/i_hate_monthend_time_entry_fa_la_la_la_la_la_la/nrlxi0a/))

> Usually it's the interruptions that get missed (consulting with coworker on a case, a short call, a quick email, etc).
> ([r/Lawyertalk · Mar 2026](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lawyertalk/comments/1rnoxq4/do_you_actually_do_your_billing_entries_in_real/o98ab0j/))

> multiple people losing hundreds of hours because they were either not recorded or were dumped under a non-billable matter.
> ([r/LawFirm · Nov 2025](https://www.reddit.com/r/LawFirm/comments/1op3vlr/what_are_you_firm_policies_for_time_entry/nnfkixm/))

Firms answer with deadlines: time in by the next morning, the month closed before pre-bills (the draft bills a billing partner reads before they go out), a report of who has missing time. A deadline moves the reconstruction earlier, and the entry is still built from the sent folder and memory.

## Under 15 Minutes a Day Adds Up to 4,992 Lawyer Hours a Year

Take a firm of about 200 people with 80 lawyers. Lawyers earned a median $159,670 in May 2025, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' count, and benefits make up 30% of what private employers spend on pay and benefits, so each lawyer's pay and benefits come to about **$228,100** a year.

Say each lawyer spends 3% of the week writing up time, a little under 15 minutes a day. That is an assumption, and it sits at the low end: lawyers describe whole weekends and month-ends spent rebuilding the record.

That is the cost you can see. The one you can't is the work that was done and never written down: the short call, the quick email, the question in the hallway. The calculator prices it. Put in your own firm: it opens on those 80 lawyers, half an hour a week each that never reaches a bill, six minutes a day, our assumption and a low one.

(An interactive calculator on the page: roi-unbilled-lawyer-time.)

Clio's Legal Trends Report puts the average lawyer's rate at $349 an hour with 93% of billed time collected, so about $325. With the agents catching half (our assumption: they see the calendar, the email and the documents, never the hallway), $312,000 of the $624,000 reaches a bill, $305,040 after about $580 a month to run them. Every $10,000 of the build is earned back in about 0.4 months.

The lawyer still reads and approves every entry, and every captured minute is time really worked, which is all the opinion lets a firm bill. The writing-up is a second return: with the agents drafting about 70% of it, about 3,494 of those 4,992 hours come back, lawyer time rather than cash until client work fills it.

AI drafting will also shrink the hours some matters bill. That is a pricing decision of its own; the hours back from timekeeping are the firm's either way.

## How Qvery's Agents Draft a Lawyer's Day

![Calendar, mail, documents and AI assistant history feed the time entry agents, which match, time, draft and flag each entry; the lawyer approves every one before billing.](https://qvery.ai/blog/aba-formal-opinion-512/illustration-time-entry-agents.webp)

*The agents draft each entry from the day's own record; nothing reaches a bill until the lawyer approves it.*

Take one associate's Tuesday. The calendar holds a 40-minute call on a lease dispute and a half-hour firm training on the new AI assistant. The sent folder holds six emails across two matters. The document system shows a brief open for 70 minutes, and the assistant's history a 12-minute session on the same matter.

By six o'clock the agents have matched each item to its client and matter, taken the time from the record and written each narrative the way your firm writes them:

**One associate's Tuesday, drafted by the agents**

| What the day's record shows | What the agents draft |
|---|---|
| A 40-minute call on the calendar, lease dispute | 40 minutes: call with the client on the lease dispute |
| Six sent emails across two matters | Two entries, one per matter, each listing its emails |
| The brief open for 70 minutes | 70 minutes: drafting and revising the brief |
| A 12-minute session in the AI assistant | 12 minutes: instructing the assistant on the brief's research |
| A half-hour firm training on the AI assistant | Flagged: not billable, learning a tool the firm uses for everyone |
| An email to a prospective client, no matter opened | Flagged: waits for a matter number |

The training is flagged because the opinion says a lawyer may not charge a client for learning a tool the firm uses for every client.

The associate reads seven draft entries, changes one description and approves them in a few minutes. Nothing reaches the billing system until they do.

Passive timekeeping apps already do part of this. They record what was on each lawyer's screen, and some tag the matter and draft a narrative; a firm that runs one has the capture covered.

What custom agents add is the firm's own rules on top: each client's billing guidelines, what the firm treats as overhead under the opinion, which entries a billing partner wants to see first, and the systems the work already runs through, the AI assistant's history included.

## The Agents Answer to Opinion 512 Too

Agents that read a lawyer's mail and documents are themselves an AI tool under the opinion, so they have to meet the same duties:

- **Client confidences:** before the agents touch a system, we agree with you in writing what they may read and do, and where their data is processed. Qvery AI OÜ is an EU company and signs a data processing agreement. Whether a client's consent is needed is your firm's call under the opinion, and those written terms are what your ethics partner needs to make it.
- **Least access:** they start with read access to calendars, mail and documents, and write only draft entries into the billing system.
- **Supervision:** every action is logged, each draft entry keeps the calendar item, email or document it came from, and nothing reaches a bill until the lawyer approves it. The agents never touch a filing or a client.
- **Checking their work:** for the first weeks their drafts sit beside the lawyers' own entries, so the firm sees where they agree before anyone relies on them, close to the opinion's own example of checking a tool's work on a smaller set before relying on it.
- **Their cost:** the agents equip the practice the way your billing software does, so by the opinion's own test their cost is overhead and stays off clients' bills unless a client agrees otherwise in advance.

Time entries are the first of three jobs our legal playbook works through for a firm of about 200 people, beside client updates and court dates.

Industry Playbook: https://qvery.ai/industry-playbooks/ai-agents-for-legal/

## Working With Us Starts With One Practice Group's Time

Bring one practice group: access to its calendars, sent mail and document system, and last month's billed entries. Your ethics partner reviews the written terms first. We learn how your lawyers describe their work and how your billing partners read a pre-bill, connect the agents, and run them beside the lawyers' own entries.

A first working version runs within two weeks of access, and every week after that we report the hours handed back and the entries your lawyers changed. The price is fixed and agreed before we build.

Have Qvery Build Your Time Entry Agents: https://calendly.com/qvery-vlad/30min

We also set up the AI tools your lawyers use and train them on the firm's policy, the training the opinion's supervision section asks every firm to give. And if the firm is moving work to fixed fees, it needs the same record: a matter type nobody timed is a matter type nobody can price.

## Frequently asked questions



### Does ABA Formal Opinion 512 ban AI at law firms?

No. It says lawyers may use generative AI tools as long as they meet the duties they already have: competence, confidentiality, communication, candor to courts, supervision and reasonable fees. It treats AI the way an earlier ABA opinion treated outsourcing: allowed, with the lawyer fully responsible for the work.

### Is Opinion 512 binding on our firm?

Not by itself. ABA opinions interpret the ABA's Model Rules, which serve as models for most states' ethics rules. Your state's rules and its bar's opinions govern, and several state bars have their own AI guidance, Florida, California and Pennsylvania among them. Treat 512 as the baseline and your state's opinion as the rule.

### When do we need a client's consent to use AI?

When information about the client's matter goes into a tool that learns from what it is given, the opinion requires the client's informed consent, and a boilerplate line in the engagement letter is not enough. No consent is needed where no client information goes in, such as brainstorming that uses no facts from the matter.

### Can we bill for work an AI tool drafted?

On an hourly matter, yes, for the time spent: giving the tool what it needs and reviewing what it produced, never the time the work used to take. On a flat fee, the opinion warns that charging the same fee for work AI made much faster may be unreasonable.

### Can we pass the cost of AI tools to clients?

A tool that equips the whole practice is overhead and stays off the bill unless the client agreed in advance. A third-party service charged per use on one client's matter can be billed at actual cost. For a tool the firm had built, agree a rate upfront or charge its direct cost plus a fair share of running it.

### Who is responsible when an associate files unchecked AI output?

The lawyer who filed it is fully responsible for the work, whatever tool produced it. Under the supervision rules the opinion applies, the partners who supervise that lawyer and the firm's leaders who set its policies have duties too: clear rules on AI use, reasonable efforts to see them followed, and training.

### Do we have to tell clients we use AI?

Not always. The opinion requires it when a client asks, when the engagement letter or the client's billing guidelines require it, when AI use affects the fee, and before client information goes into a tool that needs consent. It also calls the engagement letter a logical place to explain how the firm uses AI.

### Do the agents work with our billing system?

They write draft entries the way your billing system already accepts them from software, through its connection for other programs or an import file. What the agents can reach depends on the access each of your systems offers, and we confirm it with you before we build anything.

### What happens to time the agents cannot place?

It waits for the lawyer with the record it came from: an email to a prospective client with no matter opened, a call whose invite names no matter, a document saved outside any matter folder. The lawyer assigns it or marks it non-billable. The agents never guess a matter onto a bill.

### Does Opinion 512 cover paralegals and staff who use AI?

Yes. The supervision rules it applies reach nonlawyer assistants: a lawyer with direct authority over them must make reasonable efforts to see that their work meets the lawyer's own duties, and the training the opinion describes is for lawyers and nonlawyers alike. A paralegal's AI-drafted summary is checked like an associate's.

### Do we need a written AI policy because of Opinion 512?

The opinion says the firm's managing lawyers must establish clear policies on the permissible use of generative AI, and supervisors must make reasonable efforts to see them followed. A short written policy naming the approved tools, what client information each may see and how output gets checked is the plainest way to show that.

### Can the agents read email from people who are not clients yet?

The opinion extends confidentiality to prospective clients' information as well as current and former clients'. The agents read those emails under the same written terms as the rest of the mailbox, and an email with no matter opened waits for the lawyer rather than landing on anyone's bill.

### What if a client's billing guidelines ban AI charges?

Then nothing changes on that client's bill: the agents' cost is overhead the firm carries, never a line item. The agents can also flag the entries a client's guidelines restrict, so a billing partner sees them before the pre-bill goes out.

### Do the agents decide what is billable?

No. They propose the time from the record and mark what the opinion and your policy say a client may not be charged for, such as a training session on a tool the firm uses for every client. The lawyer decides what was worked, what is billed and what is written off.