AI Playbook for Florida Family Law Firms · Updated October 2026

The AI Playbook for Florida Family Law Firms

Divorce. Time-sharing. Support. Financial discovery. Thirty prompts. One question before any of them: what can safely go into the tool?

Generic AI advice was written for nobody. It does not know your client’s child is in the middle of a safety dispute, the financial affidavit depends on incomplete records, or the alimony language in the old form predates the law now in force. Fluent answers are easy. Defensible work takes a process.

Get the Playbook

Built for small Florida family law firms

A family law file is not a generic legal file. It can contain a child’s information, account records, health details, allegations of violence, private messages, and the facts a client was reluctant to tell anyone. Moving faster is useful. Moving those facts into an unapproved AI account is not.

AI can organize an intake packet, build a chronology from a bounded set of records, identify missing financial documents, map facts for a time-sharing analysis, and draft a plain-English client update. It can also invent an authority, miss the context behind a message, or turn a disputed allegation into a confident statement of fact.

This playbook was built for solos and small Florida teams handling dissolution, parenting plans, support, equitable distribution, domestic violence issues, paternity, relocation, and modification. The goal is a supervised workflow inside the software your firm already uses. The lawyer still decides what the facts mean and what the client should do.

What you get

The core playbook: Florida-specific guidance for small family law firms. It brings the practice workflows, ethics discussion, data controls, prompt library, and a staged implementation plan together in one document.

Thirty ready-to-adapt prompts address work from intake and financial discovery through parenting issues, mediation preparation, filings, and client communication. Use them as supervised starting points. They are not legal conclusions you can paste into a pleading.

Examples from the 30-prompt library

  • Intake fact summary and missing-information questions
  • Document request and financial discovery planning
  • Financial-affidavit source and discrepancy review
  • Time-sharing factor analysis for lawyer review
  • Parenting-plan drafting support
  • Alimony research and current-law checks
  • Message and document chronologies
  • Mediation preparation and issue lists
  • Relocation and modification issue spotting
  • Client status updates in plain English

Firm controls and templates to adapt

  • Four-tier classification of information before an AI tool receives it, including a workable Tier 4 rule: the most sensitive data goes only into named tools, with written attorney sign-off
  • Sample Approved Tool List naming five tools: Lexis+ with Protégé, Westlaw CoCounsel, Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT Business, and Claude Team or Enterprise
  • Sample AI Governance Policy (Appendix A)
  • Client AI Disclosure language (Appendix B)
  • Court-disclosure template to assess where appropriate (Appendix C)
  • Vendor data-handling questions (Appendix D)
  • 90-Day Implementation Roadmap (Appendix E)
  • Authorities for source checking (Appendix F)
  • Interim AI Use Policy and 5-minute checklist your team can sign this week (Appendix G)
  • A one-page October 2026 Update: what changed, and what to do about it

The old form is not a source of current law

Alimony changed. Time-sharing changed. An AI tool can still draft around yesterday’s form with complete confidence.

Florida’s alimony statute and parenting and time-sharing statute are verification points throughout the playbook. A proposed parenting plan needs more than polished language; a financial analysis needs source documents and checked figures. The playbook also discusses parentage questions after Brito v. Salas without turning that decision into a shortcut for every fact pattern.

Forms update, October 1, 2026. Florida Supreme Court Opinion SC2026-1262 amended Rule 12.015 so every family law form is now a Florida Supreme Court Approved Family Law Form, and the Court can create, amend, or abrogate forms by order or opinion, outside the normal rulemaking process. Translation: forms can now change faster than your template folder. Older titles alone do not invalidate existing forms, and comments on the amendments are open until November 24, 2026. Pull the current version from the Florida Courts forms page every time. Never let an AI tool rebuild a form from memory.

The opportunity is practical: update the intake questions, check the firm’s forms, organize the evidence, and make the legal review step explicit. A faster first draft helps. A faster wrong answer just reaches the client sooner.

Built around the rules that apply to your practice

Florida Bar Ethics Opinion 24-1

Confidentiality, competent and accurate work, billing, and advertising are addressed in the opinion. The playbook applies those concerns to family law files and firm workflows.

Florida family law

Section 61.08 on alimony, section 61.13 on parenting and time-sharing, and the cited parentage decision are treated as sources to check, not answers to take from a chatbot.

Florida court filings

In August 2026 the Second DCA struck two briefs carrying 46 fabricated or unsupported citations, fined counsel, and referred him to the Bar. Amended Rule 2.515(d)(2) now requires every signer to represent that cited authorities exist and are accurately cited. Administrative Order AOSC26-12 bars circuit courts from adding their own AI disclosure orders; federal judges still can. The playbook builds verification into the filing process.

The playbook’s approved-tool and data-tier requirements are proposed firm controls. They are not account-tier mandates stated in Opinion 24-1. Check the applicable court rules and orders for the particular filing; the statewide Florida framework and federal court requirements are separate.

The practice-focused rules discussed include 4-1.1 Competence · 4-1.6 Confidentiality · 4-5.3 Supervision · 4-3.3 Candor · 4-1.5 Fees. Opinion 24-1 also addresses lawyer advertising and AI chatbots. For rule-by-rule answers on confidentiality and vendor data, see the 25 AI ethics questions and the Vendor AI and Data Governance Audit.

Where AI fits, and where it should stay in its lane

Use it to sort, compare, outline, and prepare a first draft from approved inputs. Make the output traceable to the record. Ask it to show gaps and uncertainty instead of filling them with plausible prose.

Do not let it decide whether a child is safe, which witness is credible, whether to concede a disputed asset value, or what settlement position serves the client. Those calls belong to the lawyer.

The guardrail

Real-matter facts, including facts with names removed, follow the firm’s approved-data process. Check every material figure against its source, every authority against the actual text, and every filing or client-facing document before it leaves the firm. The 90-day roadmap starts with one bounded workflow, tests it, and expands only after the team can run it reliably.

Who this is for

The managing partner, owner, practice leader, office manager, or senior paralegal at a small Florida family law firm. You know AI can help with document-heavy work. You also know a family law matter is a terrible place to discover your firm’s data rules by accident.

You want to know where AI helps, where it is dangerous, what staff can do, and where a lawyer must review and decide. You want a process that holds up on a busy Tuesday, not a demonstration that worked once with a fake file. If intake is where your firm leaks the most, start with the Client Intake Workflow Playbook.

This is not for:

  • Large firms with dedicated IT and compliance departments
  • Firms outside Florida that do not need Florida-specific workflows
  • Lawyers looking for prompts that replace review, source checks, or professional judgment

Greg Yates · Actionable AI

Former Big Law corporate partner. Solo AI-adoption consultant to small Florida law firms. Based in Daytona Beach.

I help firms turn scattered AI experiments into reviewed, repeatable work using the software they already pay for. In family law, that means client information stays protected, staff know their roles, and the lawyer remains responsible for the result.

Authoritative references

Last reviewed: October 8, 2026.

Related resources

Download the AI Playbook for Florida Family Law Firms.

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Download the Family Law playbook (PDF)