How Can Personal Injury Firms Use AI for Intake Within Florida Bar Rules?

AI can answer every inquiry, collect the facts of the accident, check them against the firm's intake criteria, and book a consultation, as long as it gives no legal advice, protects what callers share, and works under a lawyer's supervision. The Florida Bar's guidance on generative AI keeps the lawyer responsible for all of it, so the firm writes the answers and approves the rules.

This summarizes Florida Bar guidance as of October 2026 for planning. It is not legal advice.

What can AI do in personal injury intake?

The repetitive, time-sensitive part. An AI intake agent can:

• Answer every call and message, day or night, in English or Spanish
• Collect the basics: when and where the accident happened, injuries, treatment so far, insurance, whether there is a police report, and whether the person already has a lawyer
• Compare those facts with the firm's written intake criteria
• Book a consultation on the attorney's calendar, or tell the caller when the firm will follow up
• Send intake documents and reminders

That speed matters when a caller may be contacting several firms the same day. Deadlines are short too: since Florida's 2023 tort reform law, a general negligence claim, which covers most car accident cases, must be filed within two years for incidents after March 24, 2023, down from four.

What does the Florida Bar say about using AI?

The Florida Bar addressed it in Ethics Opinion 24-1, an advisory opinion on generative AI issued in January 2024. Its main points for intake:

• Disclose the AI. A chatbot that talks with prospective clients must include a disclaimer that it is an AI program, not a lawyer or an employee of the firm.
• Facts, not advice. The opinion applies the Bar's long-standing guidance for non-lawyer intake staff: say you are not a lawyer, collect the facts, and give no legal advice. A lawyer cannot hand the practice of law to AI.
• Protect what callers share. Check an AI tool's data retention, sharing, and self-learning policies, and get informed consent before confidential client information goes into a third-party tool.
• Supervise it like staff. The lawyer is responsible for what the AI says. A chatbot must not be misleading, intrusive, or coercive, and any claim that a firm's AI is better than others must be objectively verifiable.
• Bill honestly. No inflated hours, and the actual cost of an AI tool can be passed on only if the client is told.

In 2024, the Florida Supreme Court also added generative AI language to the comments on the rules for competence, confidentiality, and supervision. Nationally, the ABA's Formal Opinion 512 (July 2024) sets out the same duties.

How did one Miami firm set up its AI intake?

Wolfson & Leon, a Miami personal injury firm, built its intake on three choices that line up with that guidance:

1. The firm writes the answers. Lily, the firm's AI intake agent, answers from a knowledge base of more than 40 answers dictated by the firm's attorney, so she repeats the firm's own words instead of improvising.
2. Rules need approval. In the firm's case platform, the AI learns rules from how staff work, but a rule only takes effect after repeated evidence and staff approval, and client names are scrubbed out first.
3. Deadlines are flagged, not decided. A compliance center flags statute-of-limitations dates and open liens for staff, and court-order dates are pulled for staff to confirm.

The same firm's marketing runs on Florida Bar advertising rules: they are written into every prompt of its content dashboard.

Which intake decisions should stay with an attorney?

The ones that are legal judgments:

• Accepting or declining a case. The AI can collect facts and apply the firm's screening questions; a lawyer decides.
• Anything about fault, value, or what the person should do. That is legal advice.
• Deadline edge cases. An accident date close to the limitations period goes to an attorney the same day.
• Conflicts. Checking whether the firm already represents someone on the other side is a lawyer's call.

Writing those down as rules, with an owner for each, is the method in turning judgment calls into rules.

How should a firm follow up after the first contact?

Quickly, and within two sets of rules. The Florida Bar's Rule 4-7.18 bars soliciting people by phone or in person when there is no prior relationship, and bars written contact about a personal injury within 30 days of the accident, while communications made at a prospective client's request are treated differently. Someone who contacted the firm has started the conversation, but confirm your follow-up plan with the Bar's ethics hotline. Automated follow-up texts and calls also need the right consent and an easy way to stop. The rules are the same ones covered in reviving old leads without breaking the rules. Cream Digital builds intake like this as part of lead generation operations.