law.org.ai / reserved-acts · an Org.AI Foundation program
Five acts of legal help stay with a licensed human.
Everything else a lawyer may supervise a machine in doing. This is the catalog.
- Version
- 0.1.0 — published 31 July 2026The first publication. Every later change gets a version, a date, and a reason in the changelog below. The machine face is /reserved-acts.json. Diff any two versions and you have the whole history of what we think stays human.
- Reserved acts
- 5Short on purpose. A reserved list that grows without limit is a moat; one that stays short is a boundary. Citations are to the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct and Minnesota Statutes, read from revisor.mn.gov; other states differ in wording more than in substance.
- Industries covered
- One. Law.The method is meant to transfer — the same catalog shape works for any licensed profession — but we publish only what has been mapped against real rules. Nothing else is listed until it has been.
The five acts
Each act names what is reserved, cites why, and lists the work around it that a supervising lawyer may delegate to a machine.
1 · Appearing before a tribunal.
Representing another person in a court or other tribunal is reserved to a licensed lawyer. Reserved by Minn. Stat. § 481.02, subd. 1 and Rule 5.5(a) of the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct; Minnesota's own Supervised Practice Rules show how narrowly exceptions are drawn even for certified humans.
A lawyer may supervise a machine in: legal research, argument outlines, exhibit and record organization, transcript summaries, deadline tracking.
2 · Giving final legal advice.
Applying law to one person's facts, delivered to that person as advice they may rely on, is reserved. Reserved by Minn. Stat. § 481.02, subd. 1; the line between general information and individualized advice is Minnesota's oldest test for the practice of law (Gardner v. Conway, 1951), and independent judgment is the lawyer's duty under Rule 2.1.
A lawyer may supervise a machine in: research memos, issue-spotting, draft explanations in plain English — each adopted by the lawyer before it reaches the client.
3 · Signing and filing pleadings and court documents.
The signature on a filing is a licensed human's certification, and it does not delegate. Reserved by Minn. Stat. § 481.02; Minnesota's Supervised Practice Rules use the same boundary for supervised humans — the supervising lawyer signs.
A lawyer may supervise a machine in: drafting, cite-checking, formatting to court rules, assembling exhibits — behind a mandatory human verification gate before anything is signed.
4 · Setting and taking legal fees.
The fee is the lawyer's judgment and the fee agreement is the lawyer's contract with the client — signed by them, not by software, and never shared with a nonlawyer. Reserved by Rules 1.5(a) and 1.5(b)(1) (the fee and its required signed writing), Rule 1.15 (client funds), and Rule 5.4(a) (no fee sharing with nonlawyers).
A lawyer may supervise a machine in: generating the agreement for the lawyer's adoption, invoicing mechanics, payment processing that takes no title to the fee.
5 · Binding the client on consequential decisions.
Settling, changing the scope of representation, waiving a conflict — these are the client's own decisions, received by the lawyer from a verified human, never inferred by software. Reserved by Rule 1.2(a) (the client decides settlement), Rules 1.0(f) and 1.7(b)(4) (informed consent), and Rule 1.4 (the communication that makes consent informed).
A lawyer may supervise a machine in: preparing the decision memo, delivering it to the verified human, recording the acknowledgment — the machine carries the decision, it never makes it.
Everything not on this list — research, drafting, forms, timelines, translation of legalese — is preparatory work a licensed lawyer may supervise a machine in doing.
How to read it
The catalog is a boundary, not a moat. It exists so the delegable side can be automated without argument about where the line is.
Three reading rules.
First: the reserved list is deliberately short, and the burden runs against adding to it — every addition must carry a rule citation, not a preference. Second: "a lawyer may supervise a machine" means what Minnesota's own supervision rules mean — a named lawyer with personal professional responsibility, who reviews and adopts the work. Third: the catalog is jurisdiction-honest — citations here are Minnesota's; the act names are meant to survive translation to any state, and where a state draws a line differently, its version of this catalog should say so with its own cites.
The machine face at /reserved-acts.json carries the same five acts, the same citations, and the version number — one fetch, no scraping.
Utah's post-sandbox reform committee is studying this same shape — the UK's "reserved activities" model, which defines what only fully licensed lawyers may do and frees everything else. We think that is the right question, asked in the right order.
Changelog
Every change to the catalog gets a version, a date, and a reason. This is the whole log.
0.1.0 — 31 July 2026.
First publication. Five acts, Minnesota citations, drawn from a rule-by-rule mapping of the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct and Minn. Stat. § 481.02 verified against revisor.mn.gov.
Nothing has changed yet. When it does, the old version will still be readable here.
Where it comes from
Every citation in the catalog was fetched from a primary source. Where we could not fetch one, we did not cite it.
The list, in one paragraph.
Minn. Stat. § 481.02 (unauthorized practice) and the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct — 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, 1.7, 1.15, 2.1, 5.4, 5.5 — from revisor.mn.gov. The Minnesota Supervised Practice Rules, whose boundary language (the supervising lawyer signs; appearances are narrowly licensed) this catalog borrows. Gardner v. Conway, 234 Minn. 468 (1951), Minnesota's information-versus-advice line. The Utah reserved-activities study is described in its reform committee's public materials.
Nothing that merely felt like evidence is in the room.
What this is
The reserved-acts catalog is the boundary law.org.ai builds against: five acts that stay with a licensed human, each carrying its citation, and a delegable side that a lawyer may supervise a machine in doing.
It is published and versioned so the people who regulate the practice of law can diff it, quote it, and tell us where it is wrong.
Nothing here is legal advice. The catalog states our position, not any regulator's.