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36 www.canadianlawyermag.com LEGAL REPORT investigating how a tool works and under- standing its limitations – such as the propensity for hallucinated results – helps dispel the mystique and reduce the risk of overreliance. "The most important thing for lawyers to recognize is that AI is not the saviour. It can be a great collaborative tool, but it's not the solution to everything," Carlson adds. Keep it confidential According to Sixta, security and confidenti- ality are major concerns for family lawyers who upload data to AI programs, particularly when they use open-source AI models that rely on prompts to train and improve results. " We don' t know exac tly how the program is going to use that information in future," he says. While the tech company's data use and storage policies may offer some reas- surance, there are no guarantees in an industry that traditionally takes pride in its "move-fast-and-break-things" approach. "However, you can use them in a way that reduces the risk substantially by removing all the confidential or identifying infor- mation from anything that you input and keeping it more general," Sixta adds. Put humans above machines In an increasingly digital world, the old-fashioned safeguards of supervision and verification are among the most crucial for family lawyers. In some practices, Sixta says AI tools are effectively replacing paralegals, drafting affidavits and constructing financial state- ments for clients. "It's the lawyer's responsibility to review the work done by a legal assistant or a para- legal before filing with the court. The same applies with AI," he says. "You can just sit back and let it take over your practice." When his team members present memos to MacLean, he insists on having the first page of every cited decision printed out to satisfy him that it is not a fake. But that is Do your research Before exploring or investing in an AI tool for their practice, "legal professionals need to understand what it can do and what it can't do," says family lawyer Brett Carlson, a partner in the Calgary office of Linmac LLP. In the haze of hype and hysteria that has followed the rise of generative AI, Carlson says lawyers can easily be left with an inflated sense of its capabilities. Simply be overwhelming for lawyers," he says. "You're dealing with highly emotional cases and people, which brings with it a lot of stress. You're also dealing often with very tight timelines." There's no question that AI tools have the potential to relieve some of that stress, but only when used with caution, Sixta adds. Here are some practical steps lawyers can take to protect themselves when integrating AI into their family law practice: GROWTH OF AI HALLUCINATION CASES WORLDWIDE REPORTED AI HALLUCINATION CASES, SINCE JULY 2023 200 150 100 50 0 Jan–Jun 2024 Jul–Sep 2025 Jan–Jun 2025 Jul–Dec 2024 US Australia Israel Canada UK Jul–Dec 2023 FAMILY LAW Source: French lawyer and data scientist Damien Charlotin's database of reported legal decisions involving hallucinated content produced by generative AI, as of Sep. 23, 2025. 251 28 27 28 15