AI for law firms, without waiving privilege.
Contract review, e-discovery, brief drafting, matter research, conflict checking. Deployed inside your firm's perimeter, architected against ABA Model Rule 1.6 and the growing body of state bar AI guidance.
Privilege is an architecture decision, not a vendor promise.
Whether AI processing of privileged material risks waiver depends entirely on the architecture. A prompt that flows to a public AI vendor that may train on data, or that may be subpoenaed for logging, creates a meaningful disclosure risk. A prompt that flows through a single-tenant deployment with audited no-retention is a different legal posture entirely.
ABA Formal Opinion 512 and the state bar opinions that have followed (California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas among others) converge on this distinction. Our default deployment shape is on the right side of it.
For matter-specific work, we build the additional layers a firm needs: per-client carve-outs, per-matter audit trails, cryptographic separation, and clean engagement-letter language for the AI vendor relationship.
Six legal workflows where AI earns the privilege overhead.
Contract review & abstraction
Risk-clause identification, deviation flagging from firm/template standards, deal-specific issue extraction. Citation back to source paragraphs throughout.
E-discovery copilots
First-pass document review at scale, privilege screening assistance, hot-document surfacing. Reviewers stay in the loop on all consequential decisions.
Brief & memo drafting
First-draft briefs from research outlines and case citations. Output is draft-only, attribution-aware, and verification-prompted.
Matter research RAG
Search across firm precedent, prior matters, internal expertise. Knowledge management that actually returns useful answers — citing precedent properly.
Conflict checking & client intake
Cross-matter conflict detection, client-intake interview agents, KYC enrichment. Faster intake, cleaner conflict checks.
Litigation support agents
Timeline construction from document populations, deposition-prep helpers, expert-witness coordination. Always advisory; always reviewable.
The regulatory map for legal AI.
- ABA Model Rule 1.6 — confidentiality of client information.
- ABA Model Rule 1.1 — competence; technology competence specifically.
- ABA Formal Opinion 512 on generative AI in legal practice.
- State bar opinions on AI use — the 2024-26 wave from CA, NY, FL, TX, PA, and others.
- Work-product doctrine protection for litigation materials.
- GDPR / Canadian PIPEDA for cross-border matters.
- SOC 2 — increasingly required by sophisticated corporate clients.
Full compliance hub: /ai-compliance/.
Frequently asked questions
Does using AI on privileged material risk waiver?
Only if the AI processing extends to a third party — and that's exactly what the public-AI default does. ABA Formal Opinion 512 (2024) and subsequent state bar opinions converge on this: AI processing inside a properly-architected system, with a contract that prevents the model vendor from training or retaining, does not waive privilege. The keyword is 'properly-architected.' We architect for it.
What about ABA Model Rule 1.1 (competence)?
Rule 1.1 increasingly includes AI-tool competence. Practically, this means lawyers using AI need to understand its capabilities and limitations, supervise its output, and verify factual claims. The systems we build include explicit citation, verification suggestions, and clear UI signaling when output should be treated as draft-only.
Can we use Harvey / generic legal AI through your engagement?
Harvey and other vertical legal-AI products are well-suited to many use cases. Where they fit, we recommend them and integrate them. Where firms have specific architecture requirements — on-prem deployment, vendor-independence, fine-tuning on internal precedent, multi-tenant carve-outs for client matters — we build directly. Often the right answer is a hybrid: Harvey for general workflows, our build for the specialized parts.
Do you sign engagement letters / privileged-relationship agreements?
Yes. We routinely sign engagement letters as outside vendors with privilege-relevant obligations. Where the firm prefers, we engage under the law firm's name as a sub-contractor to maintain a clean privilege chain. Your general counsel will be comfortable with the structures we offer.