You are using AI at work. Lawyers use it to summarise cases. Students use it for assignments. Companies use it to draft emails, proposals, contracts, HR letters, and compliance documents. But very few people stop to ask the real question: What happens when the AI gets it wrong?
This is the single biggest problem emerging from the Reuters Practical Law analysis on generative AI in professional settings. And the truth is uncomfortable. Generative AI is not just helping us work faster. It is quietly creating a new category of legal and professional risk that neither you nor companies are prepared for.
…your next AI error could cost you your job
AI Creates Errors That Look Real, and You Are Liable for Them
Most people assume AI tools are “assistants.” But when you copy AI output into real work, it becomes your work. If the AI invents a case, misquotes a regulation, plagiarises someone’s writing, includes confidential data, or exposes a client’s information, it becomes your mistake.
Reuters highlights four high-risk areas now showing up in real cases:
- Confidentiality breaches: Employees have pasted sensitive data, client documents, and private emails into AI tools without realising these systems store prompt-based information for training or auditing.
- Hallucinated legal authorities: Courts in the US, Australia, and the UK have already sanctioned lawyers for filing AI-generated cases that never existed.
- Copyright violations: Some AI-generated text or images may contain protected material. Anyone who uses it commercially becomes legally responsible.
- Bias and discrimination: AI-generated recruitment shortlists and HR decisions are already being tested under anti-discrimination laws.
These risks fall directly on the user and the organisation, not on the AI company.
What This Means for the Everyday Professional
If you use AI without legal guardrails, you are exposing your employer, your clients, and yourself to a risk you cannot see. The problem is not using AI. The problem is using it blindly.
This is why responsible governance matters. Without rules for verification, confidentiality, and documentation, employees will continue to make mistakes that look small but have catastrophic professional consequences.
How to Fix the Problem
To protect yourself or your organisation, you need three things:
- AI Verification Protocols: Establish verification protocols within your organisation, and always verify facts, cases, quotes, statistics, and legal reasoning that come from AI. Treat every AI output as “untrusted until proven.”
- AI Confidentiality Rules: Do not paste client information, student data, internal documents, or identifiable details into public AI tools.
- AI Governance Policy: Every organisation should have clear guidance on what AI tools employees may use, when verification is mandatory, who is accountable for errors, and how AI-generated content must be disclosed.
Without this, firms and institutions are walking into liabilities with no safety net.
Why Lawyers Should Care the Most
Generative AI is forcing a shift in professional responsibility. The legal industry has never had to regulate tools that sound human while producing errors at scale. This is why AI governance is no longer optional. It is a legal necessity.
If you rely on AI at work, the question is no longer whether it will make your job easier. The question is whether you understand the risks well enough to protect yourself.
AI is here. The law is catching up. Now we must learn how to work safely before we create problems the courts cannot fix.