[HN Gopher] US v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y. 2026) no attorney-client pri...
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US v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y. 2026) no attorney-client privilege for AI
chats [pdf]
Author : 1vuio0pswjnm7
Score : 178 points
Date : 2026-04-15 13:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fingfx.thomsonreuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fingfx.thomsonreuters.com)
| rogerallen wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555642
| jeffbee wrote:
| Heppner's argument was dumb but it opens a field of interesting
| questions. If I use a document processor (like Google Docs) to
| compose a message to my attorney, which message itself would be
| privileged, but I use some sidebar feature of Google Docs/Gemini
| to clean up a sentence that I thought was clunky, and elsewhere I
| have, for whatever reason, enabled features that permit Google to
| use inputs and outputs to train or refine their models, has that
| destroyed the privilege?
| mrhottakes wrote:
| Yes, you lose the privilege if your attorney-client
| communications are not intended to be confidential. If you
| agree to share those communications with a third party, you
| don't intend them to be confidential.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't think that hot take will survive much contact with
| the near future, at least not without a good deal of
| controversy.
| margalabargala wrote:
| What constitutes "Sharing with a third party" though? Using a
| 3rd party email service like outlook or gmail? Using a third
| party docs service like google docs?
|
| It doesn't seem right that google docs would be privileged,
| but if you use the fancy spellcheck button, it no longer is.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Right, exactly. It is also too much to expect that if a
| user enabled the "personalization" button in the Gemini
| app, for unrelated reasons, they now can't expect to
| compose a privileged email to their counsel. It's a
| minefield.
| lokar wrote:
| Well, at Google people get legal advice from in house
| lawyers via Gmail. Are they not sharing that with at
| least some of the Gmail team (who could read the email)?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Gmail users (correctly and reasonably) do not expect the
| "gmail team" to read their emails, except using glass-
| breaking incident response privileges that leave audit
| trails and trigger review. Users expect that email is
| private. Anyway, both Google's privacy policy and
| American jurisprudence segregate things like emails,
| voice calls, and video calls into a separate
| "communications" category, while Google's privacy policy
| treats Google Docs as "other content you create", even
| though the difference seems immaterial if you know how
| these systems work.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Google originally declared that they read all emails.
| That was semi-changed with the Workspace rollout but
| there is nothing preventing them from reverting to the
| old policy. They already do it anyway for reminders
| extracted from email.
| jeffbee wrote:
| No normal person believes that systems delivering and
| classifying messages amounts to "gmail team reads my
| emails".
| lokar wrote:
| To me, "read" means by a human. Humans read, computers
| process.
| shimman wrote:
| The onus is on the companies to make this clear, if they
| aren't willing to tell users the dangers of using their own
| tools that kinda tells you everything you need to know
| (they don't care about their customers, only $$$).
|
| Be upset at Google for not taking privacy seriously, they
| never have and never will.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| Right so calling my attorney is the same since I'm sharing
| the call with the phone company.
| altairprime wrote:
| Nope. The wiretapping laws precedent is known as
| 'minimization'; when a legal tap is obtained of your phone
| lines, the expectation is that every effort will be taken
| not to tap attorney-client calls, lest your entire evidence
| packet get thrown out for failure to do so. That precedent
| is not _automatically_ transitive to AI just because one
| thinks it ought to be; telephone lines between human beings
| are protected both by extensive case law and also _actual
| law_ ; neither yet applies between one human and a third-
| party corporation offering an AI, _especially_ when at
| least one major AI is contractually declared in shrinkwrap
| to be 'for entertainment use only'.
| pvtmert wrote:
| maybe not the call itself but the voicemail for example.
| can it be "extracted"?
|
| another point to make it safer would be sharing the "chat"
| with the lawyer, this way it becomes media of communication
| robterrell wrote:
| But that communication is clearly intended to be
| confidential. Also isn't having one attorney on a multi-party
| communication marked confidential sufficient to create
| privilege?
| mtlynch wrote:
| When I worked at two different FAANG companies, both legal
| orientation sessions taught this specific scenario as an
| example of something that's _not_ attorney-client
| privileged.
|
| If you email your lawyer to ask legal questions, that's
| privileged communication.
|
| If you just cc a lawyer on a thread while you talk to other
| people, adding the lawyer doesn't make the conversation
| privileged or protected.
| hedora wrote:
| That is an erosion of the social contract from the early days
| of SaaS.
|
| The law in the US is based on the expectation of privacy. If
| companies and the US government repeatedly egregiously share
| private data in violation of terms of service and the law,
| then what expectation is there?
|
| 25 years ago, I'd say "Checking the 'do not train on my data'
| button in an Anthropic account would pretty clearly create an
| expectation of privacy." These days? OpenAI had to send all
| such data to the New York Times, the government has been
| illegally wiretapping the whole planet for decades, the US
| CLOUD Act exists, and companies retroactively change terms of
| service all the time.
|
| Heck, Meta has been secretly capturing lewd bedroom videos
| and paying people to watch them, and _it barely made the
| news_ , just like the allegations the WhatsApp content
| moderation team made where they claimed they have access to
| WhatsApp E2EE content (what other content could they be
| moderating?!?)
| leni536 wrote:
| What about email?
| erikerikson wrote:
| The brief linked above[0] was easy to read. IANAL but in it the
| author seems to say that online tools fail to meet the
| confidentiality "test" and explains the ruling in clear
| language.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47779377
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't know why you think I did not read it. My remark is an
| application of the 3-point test in the decision to another
| system.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Well, hrrm. I thought that because it seemed to start
| clearly in the document I linked that something like Google
| docs wasn't safe, regardless of spell checking feature use.
| However, following my link again, it seems that the
| referenced post has been edited or something because going
| to grab a quote, I found myself in a different document
| than I remember.
|
| I think in hindsight I was remarking, effectively, these
| two claims (yours and the courts) don't seem to live in the
| same world. Not your responsibility to resolve my confusion
| and different parts of the court system can issue edicts
| that contradict to be later resolved at higher levels of
| the system so... Sorry I didn't respond within the full
| context you wrote.
| mmastrac wrote:
| There is no way that this state of things survives long-term.
| Rationally, it's really no different than any other tool involved
| in production of your work product.
|
| FWIW not all cases have gone the same way, so there is likely to
| be a higher reckoning on this in multiple countries:
| https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/mypmyjwdzpr/...
| altairprime wrote:
| They'd have to pass a Senate bill modifying copyright and
| granting corporate-nonperson status with legal rights to
| hosted, certified by the bar, registered and renewed AIs
| _only_. Otherwise the work that's markov'd as 'legal advice'
| has no origination of record from a legally-recognized entity
| and therefore can't be affirmed to be legal advice (legal
| advice is not public domain, or else protections would be
| drastically weakened; and, provided by A to B test fails: no
| such entity A), and anyone could claim the entirety of their
| email as protected from discovery by 'cc'ing AI' for legal
| advice on every email for a vacation responder reply emitted by
| a self-hosted trepanned agent (a corrupted lawyer can still
| give protected legal advice).
|
| Or, they'd have to assert that content generated by AI on
| behalf of a user is protected -- there's no way to tell whether
| it's legal advice so it all must be treated as such (can't
| trust the AI to judge this, given how hallucinatory they are in
| legal filings!) -- at which point AI companies would be refused
| the right to harvest your AI conversations for further training
| and profit-extraction (which would subject them to prosecution
| for, of all things, illegal wiretap under SS2511(1)(e)(i) if
| not others). Google would never allow that to happen, seeing as
| how that's literally _their entire business_.
|
| I fully expect someone to set up the equivalent of HIPAA for
| legal advice AIs and for _that_ to be found acceptable for
| instances hosted in protected enclaves, but the big four's main
| products aren't likely to qualify for that until they solve
| hallucinations and earn back judges' trust.
|
| (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice. Ironically, I
| wouldn't have to say this if it was AI writing. Heh.)
| fny wrote:
| > "Plaintiff, as a pro se litigant, has a right to assert work
| product protection over such material."
|
| This just argues _attorneys_ have this protection--which is
| true. Typical plaintiff 's do not have the same level of
| protection.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| This is a pretty terrible decision and inconsistent with all
| sorts of all other standards. If I did legal research in Google
| docs, it'd be covered. If I went to a legal library and took
| notes, it'd be covered, etc
| bobro wrote:
| Chatting with Claude strikes me as fundamentally different from
| writing your own notes.
| pvtmert wrote:
| people point out in sibling comments that is phone call then be
| out of client-attorney privileges? since it goes through a "3rd
| party"? maybe not the call itself but the voicemail for example.
| can it be "extracted" for the same purpose?
|
| another point to make it safer would be sharing the "chat" with
| the lawyer, this way it becomes media of communication.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Well, what type of phone call? You mean a phone call between a
| lawyer and a client? If so, then, of course it is protected,
| because it is communication between the lawyer and the client.
| It is not a good analogy for Claude chats because those chats
| are not communication between a laywer and a client.
|
| The concept of sharing the chat with the lawyer will not work,
| since as the ruling points out, you cannot turn a non-
| privileged document into a privileged one by sharing it with
| your lawyer after the fact.
| avaer wrote:
| > It is not a good analogy for Claude chats because those
| chats are not communication between a laywer and a client.
|
| How is it not? I get that a chatbot is not a person with
| rights. And NAL.
|
| But for all intents and purposes, it _is_ a communication
| about legal advice. The way a lot of people use it _is_ legal
| advice. They will continue to use it that way.
|
| So for the law to then turn around and say that it's evidence
| that will be used against them is kind of messed up. It means
| confidentiality of your case is bought by paying a lawyer for
| legal protection, not because you actually need their advice
| over a chatbot's.
| compass_copium wrote:
| It's not a communication with a lawyer, though. Asking a
| guy on the street if it's illegal to sell the meth you have
| in your pocket is not privileged communication, and he
| could definitely testify about that after you got arrested!
| submerge wrote:
| That would be hearsay, yes?
| compass_copium wrote:
| -\\(o O)/- maybe, IANAL
| jmalicki wrote:
| Why? He heard you say it and can testify to it.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Repeating something that you heard someone say is the
| literal definition of hearsay. Typically courts want to
| hear about facts from people who actually know those
| facts, not someone who heard someone talking about those
| facts.
|
| This would fall under the "statement against interest"
| exception to hearsay, though, because obviously the
| person who originally said the thing isn't going to want
| to admit in court that they were committing a crime.
| jmalicki wrote:
| The fact is that he said it.
|
| You aren't repeating a fact you heard him say, you are
| reporting what you heard him say.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Reporting what you heard someone say is the literal
| definition of hearsay.
|
| If you want to use someone saying something as evidence
| in court, they need to say it to the court as directly as
| is practical. If the person saying it isn't going to say
| it directly to the court, then it needs to be justified
| with one of the exceptions to the hearsay rule.
|
| In this example, it would be allowed because the person
| saying it wouldn't be willing to admit to a crime in
| court.
| jmalicki wrote:
| It's a statement not offered to prove the truth of the
| asserted statement - non-hearsay.
|
| It would be hearsay if offered as evidence that you had
| meth in your pocket. It would not if offered in evidence
| you were enquiring about the legality, to show intent.
| salawat wrote:
| Government decides not to make it's own ability to make a
| case and use what you do against any more difficult. More
| at 11.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Because as you correctly point out the chatbot is not an
| attorney. Thus no attorney client privilege.
| simonreiff wrote:
| It's not a communication if only one human person
| participates in the conversation. That's just enhanced
| note-taking and generating. I don't agree with the notion
| that talking to an LLM is disclosure to a third party
| because an LLM is neither a natural person nor even an
| artifical person recognized at law like a corporation,
| trust, LLC, etc.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I don't think it's communication at all. Instead, I think
| it's a kind of _lookup_. Dealing with an LLM is searching a
| database. You are looking up legal texts in order to prepare
| legal arguments.
|
| I think the principled way of treating this is that it's
| privileged for the purpose of preparing legal arguments, but
| not privileged in general. I think this can be supported
| using the existing law.
|
| Presumably a lawyer's Google searches with terms like "what
| article is X" etc. are privileged too, since they are used
| for preparing legal arguments. That it uses AI doesn't
| suddenly make it communication.
| jmalicki wrote:
| So I can't turn an unprivileged draft email into a privileged
| email by hitting send?
|
| At what point does my typing become communications with my
| lawyer?
| jmalicki wrote:
| Reading the decision, they seem to say that online word
| processing software would be viewed similarly, since the
| TOS may allow Google to see your data, it is not
| confidential, so use of Google Docs or Gmail would not be
| considered privileged?
|
| WTF
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| > you cannot turn a non-privileged document into a privileged
| one by sharing it with your lawyer after the fact.
|
| Surely this is how all async communication with a lawyer
| works though? Or are gmail drafts privileged if you can make
| a case that it was going to be sent to your lawyer? Is a
| letter at your house privileged if you can make a case that
| it was going to be sent to your lawyer?
| DannyBee wrote:
| Lawyer here: So first, while this entire comments section
| seems to treat privilege as if their is a single universal
| corpus of law around it, their isn't. Federal and and state
| courts do different things here. Each state does different
| things than other states.
|
| It's therefore practically hard to give a useful answer to
| your questions. There are states and courts that don't
| recognize drafts as privileged. There are states that do as
| long as they are created for the purpose of seeking legal
| advice. There are states in between.
|
| Also keep in mind the main goal of _this_ kind of privilege
| is to ensure people seek legal advice, and feel comfortable
| doing so, _before_ they do something that's going to get
| them into trouble. it does protect your ability to prepare
| a defense, and that sort of thing,but if you do a thing
| after you email your lawyer and the lawyer says "that is a
| horribly illegal idea", privilege isnt really there to help
| you, even if that particular email often happens to be
| privileged. It's there to help society, not keep you from
| having to pay damages. For example, Companies overuse
| lawyers in things like clean up after security incidents -
| very little of that will be actually privileged from
| discovery no matter how many lawyers got involved.
|
| All that said general advice is to ensure drafts are
| deleted after being sent.
|
| The only real common thing in this area of law is that the
| party trying to withhold the document bears the burden of
| showing it is privileged.
| jerf wrote:
| The law has a concept of a "carrier" [1], and has the ability
| to judge whether or not the carrier in question is responsible
| for what it is carrying.
|
| I'm not making a blanket statement that that means everything
| is a carrier, because a good chunk of the page I linked is
| devoted to endless legal nuances and I defer the _details_ of
| the concept to those who know better. I 'm just saying that the
| law has a well-established concept for this sort of situation,
| such that it is not the case that just because a third party is
| involved instantly all protections dissolve. If you really want
| to dig into the details, that's something an AI that hits the
| web and digests things would be pretty good at, as long as
| you're not planning on legal action based on that. Sometimes
| the hardest part of learning about something is just finding
| the term for it that lets you dig in.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| > another point to make it safer would be sharing the "chat"
| with the lawyer, this way it becomes media of communication.
|
| This guy made the same argument, but as the court detailed,
| this is a misunderstanding of attorney-client privilege.
| Sharing an unprivileged conversation with your lawyer doesn't
| make it privileged. A phone call _to your lawyer_ is
| privileged, but a phone call to your cousin Jimbo about what
| you should tell your lawyer is not.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| I'm guessing a self-hosted chat remains privileged?
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Definitely not, unless you are acting as your own advocate.
| Self-hosting does not offer any form of protection. Just like
| notes you write yourself on your PC, a self-hosted chat could
| be used as evidence against you.
| nullc wrote:
| Private notes you make for the purpose of working with your
| lawyers are privileged.
| baq wrote:
| Takeaway is write stuff down and securely delete the local
| chat archive
| baq wrote:
| Yes if you thoroughly shred the archives.
| fny wrote:
| I highly recommend everyone actually read the opinion. It's such
| a thorough legal takedown of Heppner, you'll learn how the law
| works and why it doesn't apply to a lot of the made up cases in
| this thread:
|
| TLDR:
|
| - Claude told him IANAL
|
| - Claude privacy policies say they "may disclose personal data to
| third parties in connection with claims, disputes, or litigation"
|
| - Work product doctrine, _does not apply_ in the same way to
| plaintiffs
|
| - Lawyers did not direct him to use Claude (i.e. the laywers did
| not direct him to do research for the case using a specific tool)
|
| My takeaway is that, as is, I should not do any work without a
| VPN or in plaintext. Everything else was up for grabs even before
| this case.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Is a VPN really going to help here? I guess if you can figure
| out a way to pay Claude anonymously. But if you are charged
| with a crime and your computer is siezed, and there is some way
| to discover your Claude account from the contents of your
| computer, then you will be up a creek either way.
|
| My takeaway is: don't do crime, and if you must do crime, don't
| use AI in the commission of a crime, in a similar way as it is
| unwise for criminals to keep recordings of their own phone
| conversations or what have you (a surprisingly common habit for
| criminals!).
| randallsquared wrote:
| That's a great takeaway, but may not be practically
| achievable in the world where
|
| > _The average professional in this country wakes up in the
| morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes
| to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several
| federal crimes that day._
|
| -- https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-
| Innocent/dp...
| gruez wrote:
| That claim by the way, is totally unsubstantiated, and the
| cases have very questionable applicability to the "average
| professional".
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I once saw a talk given by a lawyer on exactly this
| topic. It was a long time ago, unfortunately I won't be
| able to find it. Anyway, the takeaway is that there are
| plenty of Federal laws that are written in such a way
| that there is incredible room for interpretation by
| prosecutors. Vagueness and overbroad language to the
| point that indeed they can come up with some kind of
| crime pretty much any time they want to.
|
| On the other hand, that kind of thing would not _only_ be
| enough to bring a case. They use that kind of power to
| enhance their case against people they know are real
| criminals. Of course, the more the Justice Department
| becomes captured by bad actors, the less this applies.
| yonaguska wrote:
| In a state that I lived in, one day the laws changed and
| I became a felon overnight for not registering certain
| inanimate objects with my state govt.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I don't think very many people charged with federal crimes
| are actually just innocent bystanders. So even if we grant
| that people are technically committing three felonies a day
| (which I don't) I think the admonition can simply be read
| "don't do crimes that a federal prosecutor might actually
| charge you with."
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but he's still using it to prepare his legal arguments and
| to understand the law.
|
| The reason attorney-client communication is privileged is so
| that people won't interfere in people's preparation of their
| case, not because the lawyer is magic. The principled thing is
| for the courts to apply principles like this based on the
| principle.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| According to the ruling's citations, the purpose of the
| privilege is to provide protection for the mind of the
| advocate. If you're not the advocate and you're not talking
| to the advocate the privilege doesn't apply. Should-bes in
| this case are imponderable to me but that appears to be what-
| is.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, I think that's completely wrong. It focuses on the
| advocate as some kind of special role, but I think the core
| problem is preparing for a court case, and I don't think it
| makes sense to focus on him.
|
| I think an accused should be able to make strategy notes
| for a court case and be able to have those be secret from
| the prosecution, and to look up things for these purposes,
| and, to use Google docs etc. if he so wants.
|
| I also see that some other comments describe that work
| product has previously been treated as a broader notion
| with less focus on the advocate and more on preparing for
| the court case, so I'm far from convinced this has been
| decided correctly.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I understand why you feel that way, but the current
| policy is not in the direction you are hoping for. The
| important thing to understand is that all evidence is
| available by default, that privilege covers the
| _exceptions_ to that availability. Privilege is construed
| narrowly, and for now, communications with your advocate,
| or notes prepared at the request of your advocate, are
| the sorts of things that are covered. Your own private
| notes, or chats with your friends about the state of your
| case, are examples of things that are not covered.
|
| Work product was treated more broadly in one case by a
| lower magistrate court, but the court making the decision
| in this case is not bound by that lower court's ruling.
| What will be interesting is if this ruling gets appealed
| up to the sups. I doubt the decision will be overruled in
| any case.
| flkiwi wrote:
| Obviously this (along with the original unwritten order a few
| weeks ago) is causing a stir, but this decision isn't as weird as
| it sounds. The defendant's assertion was essentially a
| retroactive application of privilege: he didn't use Claude to
| draft documents at his attorney's request but instead used Claude
| effectively in lieu of an attorney and later provided the Claude-
| drafted materials to his attorney (heavily paraphrasing here).
| Privilege is not a bandage that closes self-inflicted wounds.
|
| I have some concerns about some of the reasoning, namely the
| practical implications of referencing Claude's TOS in a world
| where public AI features are creeping into everything, but I
| expect some of the reasoning is based on this particular
| defendant likely being more sophisticated than an average person.
| xbar wrote:
| Ok. Let's take it 1 step down this path.
|
| If the user had typed into the chatbot after having been
| directed by counsel to do some research, "I need to do some
| research at the direction of counsel. Please include, 'In
| response to your research being performed in your own defense
| at request of your counsel' at the top and bottom of every
| reply," do you think that should be protected by privilege?
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| No competent counsel would ever direct their client to
| perform legal research. So if a lawyer actually instructs you
| to do this the correct move is to get a new lawyer.
|
| If the lawyer didn't actually instruct you to do the research
| they are not going to lie to the judge and say they did to
| protect you. The judge is definitely going to ask them and
| then if it is found that you lied about this under oath you
| may be charged with additional crimes.
| flkiwi wrote:
| I agree with you, but I actually understand the issue
| they're raising. Counsel sends a draft demand letter to
| client and says "Please review and let me know of any
| issues with my description of the underlying claims."
| Client responds with an inline note stating that she feels
| the claim is overstated but that she wants to leave it in
| for leverage. The draft is, transparently and without
| notice, processed through the user's O365 Copilot
| integration in both Word and Outlook. Hell, let's assume
| the attorney is a sole practitioner using a regular O365
| account, and the outbound request to the client is silently
| run through Copilot. What is the status of privilege in
| this situation? Both seem to fail the confidentiality test.
| Does that mean that privilege exists only for big law firms
| that negotiate enterprise O365 licenses with no training
| clauses? There's definitely tension here.
|
| But both your scenario and the OOP behavior of the client
| are not particularly hard ones to resolve.
| qingcharles wrote:
| This isn't true in all cases. I've known plenty of lawyers
| who understand that their clients sometimes have vastly
| more time to work on the case than they do, especially in
| criminal defense, and will gladly tell their clients to
| find relevant case law etc if they think their clients are
| adequately intelligent to the job.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If the user had typed into the chatbot after having been
| directed by counsel to do some research_
|
| I think the simple answer is we don't know. This is a new
| area of law that probably requires legislation.
| ozb wrote:
| no, Heppner's attorney-client privilege argument wasn't that
| the conversation was privileged inherently because it was legal
| consultation with Claude, but that it was privileged as
| personal notes made in preparation for consultation with
| counsel and then actually communicated to counsel, see Ford-Bey
| v. Professional Anesthesia Services and Greyhound Lines, Inc.
| v. Viad Corp.
|
| Rakoff makes two arguments against this:
|
| - privilege was broken because Claude/Anthropic is a third
| party; but I don't think he successfully distinguishes Claude
| from say Google Docs/Translate/Gmail in this regard (he just
| notes that Google Docs isn't usually claimed to confer
| privilege on its own; but this is not the claim being made
| about Claude either); and see NYSBA ethics rules 820 and 842)
|
| - he quotes Gould v Mitsui: documents do not "acquire
| protection merely because they were transferred" to counsel;
| but that same case says they do acquire protection if
| communicated "for the purpose of obtaining or rendering legal
| advice"
| flkiwi wrote:
| I didn't say he said it was privileged because he consulted
| with Claude for legal purposes so I'm not sure where that
| came from.
|
| Re: Mitsui, it's not the same case. It's the same paragraph.
| And it's pretty clear from the context that, if I send my
| lawyer an email requesting legal advice, the contents of that
| email are privileged, but if I attach pre-existing documents
| those documents are not, because they had no privilege to
| begin with. That's not controversial. The challenge comes
| from the interplay between the court's description of the
| privilege test, the reasonable expectations of a technology
| user, and the underlying, possibly obfuscated, reality of
| that technology's function. Read literally, this case
| undermines privilege for a wide range of laypeople and
| attorneys doing a wide range of normal activities that have
| nothing to do with asking Claude for trial strategy.
| ozb wrote:
| You're right, I either misread your comment or got confused
| with a different comment or something.
|
| But I do think the Mitsui point is relevant; in particular,
| the claim that the citation is supposed to back up is:
|
| "Moreover, even assuming that Heppner intended to share
| these communications with his counsel and eventually did
| so, it is black-letter law that non-privileged
| communications are not somehow alchemically changed into
| privileged ones upon being shared with counsel."
|
| But the distinction Mitsui is actually making is rather
| different: between communications "for the purpose of
| obtaining or rendering legal advice" and not; that's at
| best orthogonal to Rakoff's claim; and the other two cases
| I mentioned pretty explicitly make the opposite case:
| documents written with intent to share with counsel, and
| then actually shared with counsel seeking legal advice, are
| in fact covered under privilege. The assumption being that
| the documents are not "pre-existing", they're created as
| part of the process of communicating with counsel.
|
| But yes, I agree that the "third-party" point separately
| undermines privilege in many contexts.
| Sevii wrote:
| How is this not effectively a ban on representing yourself in
| court? The lawyers and judge are going to be using AI. But the
| layman isn't allowed to use it?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I _think_ this means that if lawyers use it, they have also
| lost confidentiality. That could be a significant issue in a
| big case.
|
| [Edit: Or maybe not, legally. But they have definitely lost
| confidentiality in the "corporate secrets" sense, and that may
| still matter.]
| xbar wrote:
| This is really the question. Conversely, why would an
| attorney get to have privilege over chatbot interactions in a
| manner that an individual using a chatbot for self-defense
| not have such privilege?
| jcranmer wrote:
| If lawyers use it, they may have the ability to claim work
| product exemption, although this itself is going to be
| dependent on a lot more factors I can't analyze.
| bawolff wrote:
| Its no different then if you ask a friend (who is not your
| lawyer) for advice. You can ask anything you want, it just only
| gets the special protection if it is actually your lawyer.
| GJim wrote:
| The AI is a glorified search engine, not a human!
| adampunk wrote:
| And?
| SkyBelow wrote:
| So, how would it apply to web searches? If a lawyer searches
| something for a person's case, is it protected? If a person
| searches something for their own case, does it have a similar
| level of protection? Seems AI chats would need to follow the
| same rules.
| yonaguska wrote:
| This is exactly what it is. I know someone that's essentially
| representing themselves in family court. They had attorneys but
| the attorneys are basically useless for you if the opposition
| has more money and can spam you with motions that they are
| using AI to generate. which you then need to pay a lawyer to
| respond to. They since began representing themselves due to
| lack of money, and lawyer incompetence, and actually started to
| shut down the opposition... then the judge threatened contempt
| of court and jail time during one hearing if they chose to
| continue to make a statement and not accept a court appointed
| attorney to speak for them. Family court in the US is an
| absolute farce. The same judge recently started asking about
| "chatGPT" and mentioning that anything there would need to be
| disclosed to the courts. The person I know was primarily using
| their own local machine and models, however.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It's just not family courts. Judges absolutely loathe anyone
| who appears without counsel, mostly because they've been
| burned with too many sovcits and other nonsense that jams up
| the systems. So, even if you are competent they will try
| everything they can to shut you down and won't give you much
| time of day versus the party with the lawyers.
| watwut wrote:
| There is also the possibility that the person in question
| aggravated the judge by acting in a bonkers way. I have
| totally seen that - someone not understanding rules and
| procedures making all the wrong moves and then framing
| themselves as unfair victim.
| mystraline wrote:
| I'm not surprised at all. Corporate LLM chats are saved, used as
| training corpus, and are definite target for discovery.
|
| Running your own LLM on your own hardware is how you can do this
| without getting hit with discovery.
|
| And also, you want to run a LLM thats abliterated and larger. And
| if you connect to the internet, USE A VPN.
| dathinab wrote:
| The headline is a bit misleading.
|
| It's not "no attorney-client privilege for AI chats" in general.
|
| But a situation where the same would also apply if, instead of
| going to an chat bot, the person had gone to a random 3rd party
| non-attorney related person.
|
| As in:
|
| - the documents where not communication between the defendant and
| their attorney, but the defendant and the AI
|
| - the AI is no attorney
|
| - the attorney didn't instruct the defendant to use the AI / the
| court found the defendant did not communicate with the AI with
| the purpose of finding legal consule
|
| - the communications with the AI (provider) where not
| confidential as a) it's a arbitrary 3rd party and b) they
| explicitly exclude usage for legal cases in their TOS
|
| Still this isn't a nothing burger as some of the things the court
| pointed out can become highly problematic in other context. Like
| the insistence that attorney privilege is fundamentally build on
| a trusting human relationship, instead of a trusting
| relationship. Or that AI isn't just part of facilitating
| communication, like a spell checker, word program or voice mail
| box, legal book you look things up. All potentially 3rd parties
| all not by themself communication with a human but all part of
| facilitating the communication.
| neogodless wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778308 _AI ruling prompts
| warnings from US lawyers: Your chats could be used against you_
| (reuters.com)
|
| ~3 hours ago, 43+ comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555642 _Be careful:
| chatting with AI about your case is discoverable_
| (harvardlawreview.org)
|
| ~18 days ago, 13 comments
| dumah wrote:
| Use Kovel.
|
| https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/296/296.F2d...
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| tl;dr Don't be arrogant, get an attorney so you can enjoy
| attorney-client privileges. An LLM isn't an attorney.
| nullc wrote:
| Yeah, silly less than stupendously rich people-- who do they
| think they are? trying to have confidentiality. ha.
| watwut wrote:
| LLM is not attourney whether you are rich or not.
| int32_64 wrote:
| Are there any model providers that don't log chats? It seems like
| a good market opening.
|
| I wonder if anybody has gone all the way and made a darknet LLM
| service with no logs served only over TOR with XMR payments.
| poplarsol wrote:
| strongwall.ai is logless and supports anonymous payments
| including physical cash.
| bredren wrote:
| This sounded pretty good, a ~mullvad for LLM. Then:
|
| > Strongwall.ai is led by Andrew Northwall, CEO and Bryce
| Nyeggen, CTO. Andrew has 20+ years in tech, former COO of
| Trump Media & Technology Group, architect behind the relaunch
| of Parler, and senior technologist for large-scale
| infrastructure and AI systems.
| ZoneZealot wrote:
| None that operate legally will be able to avoid logging chats
| when ordered to do so.
|
| For example OpenAI were required by a US federal judge to log
| all chats, and make them discoverable to lawyers representing
| The New York Times last year.
| https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-new-york-times-copyri...
|
| Additionally the company can be gagged by a court from
| disclosing that the chats are being logged, at least in the USA
| and the UK.
| poplarsol wrote:
| There is a legal distinction between document retention,
| which is what OpenAI was ordered to do, versus re
| architecting to generate documents for logless providers.
| ZoneZealot wrote:
| OpenAI were already logging all the chats, it's just that
| if the end-user decided to delete their chat history - they
| would respect that at the time and also delete it server
| side (apparently). The court order mandated them keep the
| chat content even if the end-user wanted it deleted.
|
| They were required to change the way their systems worked,
| to no longer respect a user's chat deletion request. That
| means a non-chat-logging company can of course be forced to
| change the way their system works, to instead log chats.
|
| In the same way Apple can not only be forced to hand over
| back-doored access to UK users iCloud data (when Apple also
| hold a copy of the keys), they can also be forced to change
| the way their OS works to prevent the scenario where Apple
| don't hold the keys (preventing Advanced Data Protection
| from being enabled). The USA could force the same thing via
| the CLOUD Act.
| poplarsol wrote:
| "You have to make a change either way" is not the
| standard. Of course legislation can be passed or a
| settlement signed that mandates whatever, but there is
| well established civil procedure around document
| retention in the context of discovery for ongoing
| litigation that does not extend to demands to start
| _generating_ business records that are not currently
| created.
| bluGill wrote:
| Although a good lawyer can appeal a board order. What the
| courts will say is unknown, but there are real constitutional
| questions about ordering everything.
| int32_64 wrote:
| The Lavabit case years ago was quite scandalous, things have
| only gotten worse. There should have been much harsher limits
| on what companies can be compelled to do.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Judge Rakoff issued an oral ruling that neither the attorney-
| client privilege nor the work product doctrine protected the AI-
| generated documents.12 The decision rests on traditional
| principles of privilege.
|
| The attorney-client privilege protects (1) communications, (2)
| among only privileged parties, (3) made for the purpose of
| providing or obtaining legal advice.13 Importantly, the
| protection of the attorney-client privilege is lost if the
| communication is shared outside of the privileged parties.14 The
| party claiming privilege has the burden of showing that
| confidentiality was maintained.15 Judge Rakoff stated that the
| attorneyclient privilege did not apply because the communications
| were shared with a thirdparty tool that did not maintain
| confidentiality.16
|
| Second, Judge Rakoff held that the work product doctrine did not
| protect the documents.17 The work product doctrine protects (1)
| legal work product, (2) discussing legal strategy, (3) prepared
| by or at the direction of legal counsel, (4) in anticipation of
| litigation.18 Judge Rakoff rejected Heppners arguments that the
| work product doctrine could apply because the AI-generated
| reports did not reflect the legal strategy of Heppners legal
| counsel, although they contained theories generated by the client
| and Claude.19 Since neither Heppner nor the AI tool are legal
| counsel, and Heppner was not working at the direction of Heppners
| legal counsel, the materials were not protected by the work
| product doctrine. Judge Rakoff noted that the AI tools disclaimer
| that users have no expectation of confidentiality also undermined
| the work product doctrine claim.20
|
| 12 Transcript of Pretrial Conference at 6, _United States v.
| Heppner_ , No. 25-cr-00503-JSR (S.D.N.Y. Feb 10, 2026).
|
| 13 See _United States v. Mejia_ , 655 F.3d 126, 132 (2d Cir.
| 2011).
|
| 14 See _In re Six Grand Jury Witnesses_ , 979 F.2d 939, 943 (2d
| Cir. 1992).
|
| 15 See _In re Grand Jury Subpoenas_ Dated Mar. 19, 2002 and Aug.
| 2, 2002, 318 F.3d 379, 384 (2d Cir. 2003).
|
| 16 Tr. at 3, _Heppner_ , No. 25-cr-00503-JSR.
|
| 17 _Id._ at 6.
|
| 18 See _In re Grand Jury Subpoenas_ , 318 F.3d at 383.
|
| 19 Tr. at 5, _Heppner_ , No. 25-cr-00503-JSR.
|
| 20 _Id._ at 6. "
|
| https://www.debevoise.com/-/media/files/insights/publication...
|
| "Reasons Privilege Failed
|
| 1
|
| No attorney was involved. An AI tool is not a lawyer. It has no
| law license, owes no duty of loyalty, cannot form an attorney-
| client relationship, and is not bound by confidentiality
| obligations or professional responsibility rules. Discussing
| legal matters with an AI platform is legally no different from
| talking through your case with a friend.
|
| 2
|
| Not for the purpose of obtaining legal advice. Anthropic's own
| public materials state that Claude follows the principle of
| choosing the "response that least gives the impression of giving
| specific legal advice." The tool explicitly disclaims providing
| legal services. You cannot claim you used a tool for legal advice
| when the tool itself says it does not provide it. Claude's terms
| were specifically highlighted by the government, which directly
| undermined the claim that Heppner was seeking legal advice from
| the tool.
|
| 3
|
| Not confidential. This is the finding with the broadest
| implications. Anthropic's policy expressly states that user
| prompts and outputs may be disclosed to "governmental regulatory
| authorities" and used to train the AI model. Judge Rakoff found
| there was simply no reasonable expectation of confidentiality. As
| he put it, the tool "contains a provision that any information
| inputted is not confidential." This is not unique to Claude.
| OpenAI's privacy policy contains comparable provisions permitting
| data use for model training and disclosure in response to legal
| process.
|
| And the distinction between free and paid plans matters less than
| many assume. Both Anthropic and OpenAI use conversations from
| free and individual paid plans (Claude Free, Pro, and Max;
| ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro) for model training by default. Users
| can opt out, but opting out of training does not eliminate the
| platforms' rights to disclose data to government authorities or
| in response to legal process. Only enterprise-tier agreements
| (ChatGPT Enterprise and Business; Claude's commercial and
| government plans) exclude user data from training by default and
| offer contractual confidentiality protections. A $20-per-month
| subscription does not buy you privilege.
|
| 4
|
| Pre-existing documents cannot be retroactively cloaked in
| privilege. The AI-generated documents were created by Heppner
| before he transmitted them to counsel. Sending these unprivileged
| materials to his lawyers after the fact did not retroactively
| make them privileged.
|
| Implications for waiver of privilege
|
| Heppner fed information he had received from his attorneys into
| Claude. The government argued, and Judge Rakoff agreed, that
| sharing privileged communications with a third-party AI platform
| may constitute a waiver of the privilege over the original
| attorney-client communications themselves. The privilege belongs
| to the client, but so does the responsibility to maintain it."
|
| https://natlawreview.com/article/your-ai-conversations-are-n...
|
| "Privacy policies, including the one on Claude's website, openly
| inform users how their data is used. However, very few users
| actually read the fine print on these privacy policies, or even
| know these policies exist in the first place. It would probably
| surprise most people to learn that Claude's privacy policy
| explicitly gives its parent company, Anthropic, the right to
| disclose a user's data to third parties in connection with legal
| disputes and litigation."
|
| https://nysba.org/loose-ai-prompts-sink-ships-how-heppner-sh...
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| So use local or Chinese models instead? Got it.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Here's my question: If the attorney-client privilege, and more
| importantly, the work product doctrine don't apply here, would
| they also not apply to direct conversations between an attorney
| and an AI?
|
| It seems to me that the court would need to apply some twisted
| logic to claim that those protections apply to an attorney, but
| not to a petitioner or respondent.
| ozb wrote:
| The ruling explicitly overrules Shih, thus making exactly that
| argument:
|
| > Shih, of course, is not binding on this Court, and this Court
| respectfully disagrees with its holding. As relevant here, the
| court in Shih principally concluded that the work product
| doctrine is not limited to materials prepared by or at the
| direction of an attorney. Id. But that conclusion undermines
| the policy animating the work product doctrine, which, as one
| of the cases cited in Shih explains, is "to preserve a zone of
| privacy in which a lawyer can prepare and develop legal
| theories and strategy 'with an eye toward litigation.'"
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Does that imply that materials produced by the client in
| conversation with the attorney (e.g. attorney says to client
| "Ok write here in your own words what happened so I can
| understand your perspective") are _not_ privileged?
|
| Or would those presumably exist under the umbrella of privacy
| because they're relevant to the lawyer preparing and
| developing their legal strategy?
| Digory wrote:
| 1. "Conversation" is purely anthropomorphism. It's software
| input and output. If the client makes an excel spreadsheet
| about the cost benefit of ripping off people, it's not work-
| product.
|
| But the lawyer's draft damages analysis in excel has always
| been protected.
|
| 2. If we're going to buy the "conversation" conceit, lawyers
| talking to consulting experts have always had a lot more work
| product protection than testifying experts.
|
| The lawyer talking to Claude feels like talking to a consulting
| expert, especially since Claude can't have independent
| knowledge of facts that would allow it to testify.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A spreadsheet I produce for myself probably isn't attorney-
| client privileged. A spreadsheet or word document I produce
| for my lawyer can be attorney-client privileged (especially
| if it's literally only for the lawyer). If a ChatGPT or
| Claude chat is legally like a spreadsheet, it sounds like
| it's probably not privileged, but a ChatGPT chat you create
| "for your lawyer" would be.
| GJim wrote:
| > direct conversations between an attorney and an AI
|
| For the love of God! I hope an attorney isn't stupid enough to
| share a client confidential and personal data with an
| effectively unregulated AI.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| With so many attorneys using AI to write their court filings
| (and many being fined for the AI-generated hallucinations), I
| suspect there are many stupid attorneys that are already
| doing this.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I can tell you, just as a lot of developers are using AI
| and maybe not saying it, a _lot_ of lawyers are using AI
| right now. The ones I know are all on the Pro $250 /mo
| plans too, since they can afford it.
| freejazz wrote:
| No, because in the circumstance of an attorney doing it, it is
| an attorney doing it.
| midtake wrote:
| What if you pay a lawyer whose entire function is to type your
| questions into Claude?
| ozb wrote:
| The overruling of both Shih and the standards laid out in NYSBA
| ethics opinions 820/842 (and various other state bar
| associations, and the fact that apparently no one tried to
| challenge those in court until AI) without real discussion of
| implications seems rather unusual; and that's a rather charitable
| reading to avoid the crazier "Claude is a person" framing
|
| also, he quotes Gould v Mitsui: documents do not "acquire
| protection merely because they were transferred" to counsel; but
| that same case says they do acquire protection if communicated
| "for the purpose of obtaining or rendering legal advice"
| simonreiff wrote:
| Attorney admitted in NY here. It's fascinating that Judge Rakoff
| likely would have come to the opposite conclusion if the Claude
| chat was at the attorney's request or suggestion. I am surprised
| the court placed so much reliance on the Terms of Service, which
| are probably not so different than those of Outlook, Gmail, etc.,
| say, yet nobody disputes that attorney-client emails remain
| privileged notwithstanding the Terms of Service of those
| providers. At least I have never seen anyone argue in NY that
| privilege is waived by emailing. And unlike sending an email to
| another person, chatting with Claude is a solo conversation more
| like organizing one's notes, which if in contemplation of
| obtaining legal advice seems privileged to me. I think this is a
| very close question and am not sure it would come out the same
| way in other courts or on even slightly different facts. Very
| interesting legal question.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| Not an attorney, but its a chat between a non attorney... and
| well, themselves. It seems no different than a client writing
| hand written notes. But if they hand wrote a note to... give to
| their attorney, that seems different (which is how you seem to
| frame it). I trust that the court articulated clearly, why the
| defendants "certain notes" were not privileged, however its not
| surprising that there is nuance. In fact, its no different than
| how only "certain emails" could be privileged. This also seems
| like a win for society, if there is some sort of pattern with
| ai helping with crimes.
| Gregaros wrote:
| > This also seems like a win for society, if there is some
| sort of pattern with ai helping with crimes.
|
| That fails to recognize the tradeoff between freedom and
| security. Society suffers if we, for instance, lock everyone
| up, despite the reduction that would have in crimes. The
| balance between the two cannot be ignored to justify
| outcomes, though it is American tradition to value liberty
| over security when the two come in conflict.
| watwut wrote:
| > it is American tradition to value liberty over security
| when the two come in conflict.
|
| It is american tradition to yell slogans about freedom
| while not favoring it at all.
| salawat wrote:
| No. No it isn't a win. We need to grow beyond this stupid
| anachronistic concept that "just because you speak to a Third
| Party" there is no expectation of privacy. Humanity _works_
| as a result of third-party communication, and I extremely
| infrequently see Governments cracking open their operational
| notes to the Public except at great cost, delay, and the
| ultimate possibility of refusal. In point of fact, the
| Government _taxes us_ to build out it 's capability to _not_
| have to do so, but doesn 't do a damn thing to ensure anyone
| else has the same capability.
|
| Until "Good of the goose, good of the gander" is honored in
| good faith, this is a strict, hypocritical loss.
| tyzoid wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be a third party. Documents you
| make for yourself but never send to a third party could
| still be seized in a criminal context or subject to
| discovery in a civil one.
|
| Attorney-client privilege is a special carve out because
| the courts have recognized that clients need to be open and
| honest with their attorneys to get proper counsel and
| representation.
|
| This ruling is the court declining to extend that special
| carve out to non-lawyer AI tooling, and keeping the status
| quo of contemporaneous documents made by someone
| discoverable, whether or not shared with a third party. The
| judge draws from the TOS as an admonishment, effectively
| saying (my words, not the judge) _the TOS should have put
| you on notice that you have no expectation this data is
| confidential_.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _chatting with Claude is a solo conversation_
|
| I only wish it were.
|
| While your analogy may reflect the mental model held by most
| users, I'd argue it sidesteps the reality that the company
| providing the service can by definition listen in on every word
| you exchange. Even if they were trustworthy enough to abide by
| their promises (which life experience has taught me trends
| inversely proportional to the size of the organization*), data
| breaches have become routine across even the best resourced
| institutions.
|
| Email carries a similar exposure (unless you run your own in-
| house server / both parties are encrypting). I once had a
| lawyer who couldn't handle decrypting a zip file, and I
| insisted on hand-delivery from the other party as an
| alternative. It boggles my mind to see legal firms increasingly
| rely on consumer-oriented cloud services while acting like they
| are retaining custody of the data entrusted to them. Might as
| well send your manilla folders to a third party warehouse where
| they're handled by staff you didn't vet who aren't strongly
| bound by attorney-client privilege.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I like your analogy and found your
| viewpoint insightful. I do feel as we fork over more of our
| lives to a handful of digital cloud providers, society will
| inevitably craft stronger protections to bring the legal regime
| into alignment with most users' inherent expectations. I just
| feel there is a huge gap today between how people expect the
| systems they rely on are architected vs. how they really work.
|
| I wonder how plausible it would be for a frontier provider to
| offer something like enclaved AI instances where the user held
| sole custody of the key (marketed somewhat like Kagi Privacy
| Pass). While I doubt it could be bulletproof from a technical
| perspective, it might act as a strong signal about their
| privacy commitment. Do you think such a configuration might
| have had an impact on this Justice's deliberations?
|
| ---
|
| *Life experience has taught me the bigger a corporation is the
| more likely this is a stretch - not because employees are
| willfully nefarious, but because the corporate culture doesn't
| prioritize it anywhere near as much as they do pace of growth
| and revenue, and because the consequences they face in practice
| from harming your privacy are bascially non-existent - like a
| year or two of credit monitoring could somehow mitigate the
| consequences of all your PII being forever leaked (my general
| advice to companies collecting PII is not to treat it as an
| asset, but rather as toxic hazardous material that you
| minimize, contain and shed at the earliest opportunity).
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Would a self hosted model also not be protected? Like because
| it's classified as "ai" can those logs be read without a
| warrant?
| nashashmi wrote:
| IANAL. Emailing with an attorney would encapsulate the emailer,
| email service, any software, and the recipient under attorney
| client privilege.
|
| If the claude chat log / agent was shared with the attorney,
| then even the use of the claude chat would be encapsulated
| under attorney client privilege
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| > which are probably not so different than those of Outlook,
| Gmail, etc., say, yet nobody disputes that attorney-client
| emails remain privileged notwithstanding the Terms of Service
| of those providers.
|
| Those are tools used to communicate with others, Claude is not
| a tool to communicate with others, its akin to basic internet
| searching.
| bfa1fdbc46 wrote:
| https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/attorneyservices/wicket/pag...
|
| "DELINQUENT Attorney has failed to file one or more biennial
| registrations, and is subject for referral for disciplinary
| action by the Appellate Division, as required by Part 118 of
| the Rules of the Chief Administrator."
|
| https://iappscontent.courts.state.ny.us/aronline/Attorney-Re...
| digitaltrees wrote:
| What is the point of this? Are you seeking to undermine the
| credibility of the poster? Admitted attorney means they
| passed the bar and were eligible to practice law at one
| point, which is what they said, not currently practicing
| attorney.
| freejazz wrote:
| >At least I have never seen anyone argue in NY that privilege
| is waived by emailing.
|
| It was a frequent issue when email first was a thing
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _like organizing one 's notes, which if in contemplation of
| obtaining legal advice seems privileged to me_
|
| Is it? Aren't notes, _et cetera_ , not privileged by default?
| koliber wrote:
| Communicating with an attorney is protected by privilege. In this
| case it seems they ruled that researching your case is not
| protected by privilege.
|
| What about drafting communications with an attorney? Is a draft
| email that has not yet been sent protected? What about a Word doc
| containing a draft of an email? What about a Google search for
| "how do I spell amfeetamine?" that is part of your process of
| drafting your communication with your lawyer?
| general1465 wrote:
| Letting this being decided by courts is like letting tobacco
| companies decide if smoking is addictive or not. It is obvious
| that they will always rule in their own interest.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Questions this raises for me (making a note here to maybe
| research a bit later):
|
| Does this analysis change if using on-site AI? What if the ToS is
| different? Is it possible to stand up a service that _does_ get
| the protections required? This might also be interesting when
| dealing with trans-atlantic work.
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(page generated 2026-04-16 23:02 UTC)