Does malpractice insurance cover AI-related errors?

A Question Insurers and Firms Are Both Asking

As AI tools have become more embedded in legal practice, both law firms and their malpractice insurers have had to grapple with a new question: if an AI-related error leads to client harm and a malpractice claim, does the firm’s existing coverage apply? The answer matters a great deal to firms weighing how aggressively to adopt AI tools, and it’s an area that continues to develop as insurers gain more experience with AI-related claims.

How Standard Malpractice Coverage Is Generally Structured

Legal malpractice insurance policies are typically written to cover negligent acts, errors, and omissions committed in the course of providing legal services. This framing is generally tool-agnostic — a policy written this way doesn’t distinguish between an error that arose from misreading a statute, a missed deadline due to a calendaring mistake, or an error stemming from unverified AI-generated content. In principle, this means many existing malpractice policies would likely respond to a covered claim arising from an AI-related error in the same way they’d respond to any other negligence claim, subject to the policy’s specific terms and exclusions.

Where Complications Could Arise

That said, a few areas warrant attention. Most malpractice policies exclude coverage for intentional or reckless misconduct, as opposed to ordinary negligence. A single instance of failing to verify an AI-generated citation might reasonably be treated as negligence, but if a firm were found to have systematically and knowingly submitted unverified AI content despite clear internal warnings or known risks, an insurer could potentially argue this crossed from negligence into more reckless territory — though how any specific situation would be treated depends heavily on its particular facts and the applicable policy language.

Separately, as insurers have become more attentive to AI-related risk, some have started incorporating questions about a firm’s AI tool use, policies, and safeguards into their underwriting and renewal applications. Firms should expect this trend to continue and should answer such questions accurately, since misrepresentations on an insurance application can themselves create coverage problems down the line.

What Firms Can Do

Given the uncertainty in this developing area, firms are generally well served by reviewing their current malpractice policy language for any AI-specific provisions or exclusions, discussing their AI tool usage proactively with their insurance broker or carrier, and maintaining clear internal verification practices for AI-assisted work. Beyond insurance considerations, these verification practices are also simply good risk management, reducing the likelihood that an AI-related error occurs in the first place.

Bottom Line

Most existing legal malpractice policies are written broadly enough to potentially cover AI-related errors as they would any other negligent act, but insurers are increasingly asking about AI use during underwriting, and firms should confirm their specific coverage and maintain strong verification practices rather than assume protection.

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