US v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y. 2026) no attorney-client privilege for AI chats [pdf]

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/xmvjyjekkpr/Rakoff%20-%20order%20-%20AI.pdf

by 1vuio0pswjnm7 • 3 months ago

198 139 3 months ago

fingfx.thomsonreuters.com

rogerallen• 3 months ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555642

jeffbee6• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.

jeffbee6• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.

hrimfaxi• 3 months ago

Right so calling my attorney is the same since I'm sharing the call with the phone company.

robterrell• 3 months ago

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?

hedora• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

What about email?

erikerikson2• 3 months ago

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

jeffbee6• 3 months ago

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.

mmastrac• 3 months ago

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/...

altairprime2• 3 months ago

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 §2511(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.)

fny2• 3 months ago

“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.

sidewndr46• 3 months ago

so what if a plaintiff represents themselves?

siliconc0w• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

Chatting with Claude strikes me as fundamentally different from writing your own notes.

pvtmert2• 3 months ago

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.

asdfasgasdgasdg8• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.

impossiblefork4• 3 months ago

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.

jmalicki5• 3 months ago

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?

mcintyre1994• 3 months ago

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?

jerf• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

I'm guessing a self-hosted chat remains privileged?

asdfasgasdgasdg8• 3 months ago

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.

nullc2• 3 months ago

Private notes you make for the purpose of working with your lawyers are privileged.

baq2• 3 months ago

Yes if you thoroughly shred the archives.

fny2• 3 months ago

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.

asdfasgasdgasdg8• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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...

impossiblefork4• 3 months ago

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.

asdfasgasdgasdg8• 3 months ago

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.

flkiwi3• 3 months ago

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.

xbar2• 3 months ago

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?

asdfasgasdgasdg8• 3 months ago

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.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 months ago

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.

ozb4• 3 months ago

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"

flkiwi3• 3 months ago

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.

Sevii• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.]

xbar2• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.

GJim2• 3 months ago

The AI is a glorified search engine, not a human!

SkyBelow• 3 months ago

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.

yonaguska2• 3 months ago

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.

qingcharles3• 3 months ago

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.

ProllyInfamous2• 3 months ago

>"An attorney who represents himself in court has a fool for a client."

I'm in a years-long lawsuit in my state's small claims sessions court (as plaintiff, jurisdictional $25k limit). It's petty and essentially just two old men yelling at clouds ["on principle"]. Nobody is in a hurry, and the timeline has roughly followed ChatGPT's rollout (albeit completely unrelated) – the tech just keeps jaw-dropping.

What started as a years-long disagreement, eventually became a small claims lawsuit pro se AI, counterclaims/insanity/&all... and now we both have attorneys representing our interests ($$$$$).

I still use a local (offline) LLM to field my rudimentary legalese into better questions for my human attorney (which saves a litle $$). Together we three have squashed all counterclaims, including a counter-lawsuit (that probably I could have managed with AI, alone, but was much more natural/comfortable not representing myself). Very grateful for both my attorney and accountant (as a blue-collar electrician).

My hope going forward judicially is that some sort of amalgamated lawAI platform can better increase access for laypeople to our already-overwhelmed judgeships, like SCOTUS Roberts wrote about in his end of 2023 Judicial Review. There needs to be attorney-client privileges extended to LLMs, definitely achievable offline (until inevitable IT fail/hack).

delfinom• 3 months ago

NYS is busy trying to cozy up to those that own the state and make it illegal for AI services to give legal opinions to non lawyers.

mystraline• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

Use Kovel.

https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/296/296.F2d...

malcolmgreaves• 3 months ago

tl;dr Don’t be arrogant, get an attorney so you can enjoy attorney-client privileges. An LLM isn’t an attorney.

nullc2• 3 months ago

Yeah, silly less than stupendously rich people-- who do they think they are? trying to have confidentiality. ha.

watwut3• 3 months ago

LLM is not attourney whether you are rich or not.

int32_642• 3 months ago

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.

poplarsol3• 3 months ago

strongwall.ai is logless and supports anonymous payments including physical cash.

bredren• 3 months ago

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.

ZoneZealot2• 3 months ago

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.

poplarsol3• 3 months ago

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.

bluGill• 3 months ago

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_642• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

"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

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.

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.

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.

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• 3 months ago

So use local or Chinese models instead? Got it.

anonymousiam2• 3 months ago

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.

ozb4• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.

GJim2• 3 months ago

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.

anonymousiam2• 3 months ago

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.

freejazz2• 3 months ago

No, because in the circumstance of an attorney doing it, it is an attorney doing it.

midtake• 3 months ago

What if you pay a lawyer whose entire function is to type your questions into Claude?

ozb4• 3 months ago

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"

simonreiff2• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.

salawat2• 3 months ago

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.

rkagerer• 3 months ago

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).

rlpb• 3 months ago

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.

My theory is that lawyers tend to lean on the law to protect them more than others might. "I can ensure that it would be illegal for them to them to expose this data; therefore this method is safe" vs. "If they expose this data, is that a situation I want to deal with?".

mnky9800n• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.

freejazz2• 3 months ago

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

JumpCrisscross2• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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• 3 months ago

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.

gguncth• 3 months ago

Not surprising that the legal profession decided that their special privilege doesn’t apply to you if you’re not paying them hundreds of dollars per hour

dodomodo• 3 months ago

I might have watched too many episodes of Better Call Saul but this makes a lot of sense for me, the logic of attorney client privilege is that the lawyer would not allow you to use him for performing crime. This fact gives a clear separation, if you talk to a friend or a chatbot about defence in court, there is not guarantee that you also talked about actively performing crime.

treebeard901• 3 months ago

For criminal matters, the Govt will be so far into your phone and accounts, that unless you meet your lawyer in a faraday cage, you have no real attorney client privilege. Zoom attorney calls, cell phone calls, in person meetings with devices in the room... Using cloud connected systems to draft your legal defense... All of it is monitored and a form of parallel construction is done to use the information learned against you in ways that shape the case in the Govts favor before you even get to court. Just another use of the surveillance state.

US v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y. 2026) no attorney-client privilege for AI chats [pdf]

Related Stories