AI Legal Index
Index · The privilege question

What happens to privilege when a law firm uses a third party AI tool?

Index data last verified

When a law firm uses a third party AI tool, the question courts and bar authorities keep returning to is whether the firm took reasonable steps to keep client material confidential, and of the 462 legal AI vendors the AI Legal Index grades on Privilege and Confidentiality Posture, 16 publish a confidentiality position an outsider can verify end to end. Privilege is not automatically waived by putting client material into the product, and it is not automatically preserved either, which makes most of the analysis a set of facts a buyer can check before signing rather than argue about afterwards. The index records two more of those facts on their own: 14 of 463 vendors document that retrieval enforces the firm's own access model at query time rather than a second permission system, and 193 of 460 commit in their terms to telling the customer when a third party asks for its data. 115 publish nothing on that last question at all, which means a firm using them would learn about a subpoena to its vendor after the material had already gone.

This page is not legal advice and does not tell a firm whether privilege survives any particular deployment. That answer depends on the jurisdiction, the matter and the facts, and it belongs to the firm and its own counsel. What an index can do is narrow the question to the part a buyer controls, which is the evidence a vendor publishes before anyone signs anything. Three records carry most of that weight: the ethical wall posture, the subpoena notice commitment, and whether the agreement addresses privileged material at all.

Which legal AI vendors sign a confidentiality agreement covering privileged material?

What a vendor signs privately, an index cannot see. What it can grade is whether the agreement a buyer reads before signing addresses privileged and work product material directly, states where client data sits, and says what happens to it. These vendors publish a position an outsider can verify end to end.

A
AlexiLegal Research
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
B
BRYTERLegal Ops & Spend
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
C
CasepointLitigation & eDiscovery
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
C
ClaimMasterIP & Patents
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
D
DecoverAILitigation & eDiscovery
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
E
EvePlaintiff & Claims AI
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
E
EverlawLitigation & eDiscovery
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
G
GC AIGeneral Legal Assistants
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
J
Jimini AIGeneral Legal Assistants
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
L
LibraGeneral Legal Assistants
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
L
LighthouseLitigation & eDiscovery
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
N
NoxtuaGeneral Legal Assistants
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
S
Solve IntelligenceIP & Patents
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
S
StrongSuitGeneral Legal Assistants
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
V
VerbitLitigation & eDiscovery
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
V
Visalaw AIIntake & Client Development
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.

What a vendor signs privately, the index cannot see, so what it grades is what the vendor publishes: whether the agreement a buyer can read before signing addresses privileged and work product material directly rather than treating it as ordinary customer content. 16 vendors record an A on Privilege and Confidentiality Posture: Alexi, BRYTER, Casepoint, ClaimMaster, DecoverAI, Eve, Everlaw, GC AI, Jimini AI, Libra, Lighthouse, Noxtua, Solve Intelligence, StrongSuit, Verbit and Visalaw AI. A further 286 carry substantive published commitments with one real gap, usually a segregation or retention term stated in a trust page rather than in the agreement. 133 make the claim without publishing the document behind it, and 26 publish nothing on the question a buyer can check. A firm can still negotiate a bespoke confidentiality term with any vendor here. The grade records what was on offer without asking.

Substantive disclosure, one real gap

BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.

Enough published for a buyer to act on, short of the artifact that would settle the question. On this axis the missing artifact is usually a segregation or retention term that lives in a trust page rather than in the agreement itself.

Which legal AI tools support ethical walls and matter level segregation?

Inherits document system permissions

A firm already pays to maintain walls in its document management system. The question is whether the product inherits that access model per user and per matter at query time, or whether it built a second permission system somebody has to keep in step by hand.

Aloi logoAloiContract Review & Drafting
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
Casepoint logoCasepointLitigation & eDiscovery
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
CosmoLex logoCosmoLexIntake & Client Development
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
DeepJudge logoDeepJudgeLegal Research
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
Draftwise logoDraftwiseContract Review & Drafting
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
Harvey logoHarveyGeneral Legal Assistants
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
iManage logoiManageGeneral Legal Assistants
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
Intapp logoIntappLegal Ops & Spend
CC on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureConfidentiality is asserted in general terms, or the commitment lives only in a sales conversation and cannot be read in advance.
Libra logoLibraGeneral Legal Assistants
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
MinuteBox logoMinuteBoxLegal Ops & Spend
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
MyCase logoMyCaseIntake & Client Development
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
NetDocuments logoNetDocumentsGeneral Legal Assistants
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
Spellbook logoSpellbookContract Review & Drafting
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
Vincent AI logoVincent AILegal Research
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.

14 of 463 vendors document that retrieval enforces the source document system access model at query time, per user and per matter: Aloi, Casepoint, CosmoLex, DeepJudge, Draftwise, Harvey, iManage, Intapp, Libra, MinuteBox, MyCase, NetDocuments, Spellbook and Vincent AI. That is the posture that leaves an existing ethical wall intact, because the wall keeps being enforced by the system that already maintains it. 153 maintain their own permission model and document it, which works and moves the burden onto the firm to keep two access models in step. 118 assert segregation in public materials with no published detail on how it is enforced, and 177 publish nothing on walls or matter level segregation. A retrieval layer that indexes the whole corpus and answers from all of it defeats a wall silently, and the failure surfaces as a conflict rather than as an error message.

Full definitions of every value on this signal are on the signals reference, and each vendor profile carries the source and the verification date behind its recorded value.

Privilege on the litigation side

Which ediscovery platforms can auto generate privilege logs?

5 ediscovery platforms in the AI Legal Index document that their AI drafts privilege log entries rather than only flagging privileged documents: Altumatim, Consilio, DecoverAI, Epiq AI and Lighthouse. Several publish a written rationale for each privilege call, and the most detailed cite the specific lines behind it. That matters because a generated log is still the firm's log. Under the federal rules a privilege log has to describe each withheld item well enough for the other side to assess the claim, and the lawyer who serves it is responsible for every entry. A tool that shows its reasoning lets a reviewer check that before production rather than after a motion to compel.

Three things separate a usable generated log from a draft someone has to rewrite. The first is whether each entry carries the reasoning and the passage behind the call. The second is whether the log exports in the format the firm actually serves, without retyping. The third is who signs off.

Some vendors route every entry past their own privilege reviewers, which means the firm is buying a process. Others return entries for the firm to approve, which means it is buying a tool. Both work, as long as the buyer knows which one it bought.

Altumatim logoAltumatimLitigation & eDiscovery
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
Consilio logoConsilioLitigation & eDiscovery
CC on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureConfidentiality is asserted in general terms, or the commitment lives only in a sales conversation and cannot be read in advance.
DecoverAI logoDecoverAILitigation & eDiscovery
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
Epiq AI logoEpiq AILitigation & eDiscovery
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.
Lighthouse logoLighthouseLitigation & eDiscovery
AA on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureWritten commitments a buyer can read before signing: no training on client data, segregation documented at the level the buyer segment requires (matter level walls for a firm, tenant level separation for an in house team), privilege and work product handling addressed directly, retention and deletion stated, and the position on third party model providers made explicit.
The question almost nobody answers

If a vendor is subpoenaed for a firm’s data, does the firm hear about it first?

Privilege is asserted by the client, not by a software company. A vendor that can be served and can produce client material without telling the firm removes the firm’s chance to move to quash, and may remove any chance of learning the material left at all. A published commitment to notify where lawfully permitted, plus a transparency report showing what has actually been received, is the difference between a stated principle and an operating practice.

Of 460 vendors recorded on this signal, 193 commit in their terms to notifying the customer where lawfully permitted. 148 address disclosure to authorities or in response to legal process while saying nothing about whether the customer is told, which is the combination worth noticing: the vendor has confirmed data can leave and has left the notice question blank. 3 expressly reserve discretion over whether to notify. 115 publish nothing either way.

KLDiscovery Nebula, Tonkean LegalWorks and Verbit publish a transparency report alongside the commitment, which is the only posture on this signal that shows a practice rather than a principle.

What the index cannot tell you

Three limits, stated plainly, because a low grade here is a statement about disclosure and would be misread as a finding about the product. A negotiated engagement term or a signed confidentiality agreement is a private document, so a vendor that grants a firm exactly what it asked for in a bespoke contract records only what it published. A vendor that answers these questions well in a security questionnaire and publishes nothing grades on the published position. And an absence is dated: it means not located in public sources on the date shown, and a vendor that publishes a term tomorrow is redated the day it does. A signal records what public sources say on the date shown. It is not a grade and it is not a recommendation. Where a signal reads Not addressed, it means the index did not locate the material in public sources on that date, which is a statement about disclosure rather than about the product.

What none of that changes is the buyer’s position. A commitment that exists only in a sales conversation leaves no artifact, and an artifact is what a firm hands to its own risk committee, its malpractice carrier, or a court asking what reasonable steps were taken.

Method and adjacent reads

Every record behind this page carries a source basis and a verification date. Standards and limits are on the methodology page. The training question sits next to this one and is answered on do legal AI vendors train their models on client data, the accuracy side of the same diligence is on which AI legal research tools publish their hallucination or accuracy rates, the professional responsibility duties around all of it are on what the bar rules require before a lawyer uses AI on client matters, the security attestation behind a vendor review is on which legal AI vendors publish SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, and the wall question crossed with integration depth is on which AI legal tools integrate with iManage and NetDocuments. The complete vendor set is in the directory.

Contact

Correct a record, or ask how something was graded

Every grade and every signal on this index is drawn from public sources and dated. If a record is wrong, out of date, or missing an artifact the index did not locate, send the source and it will be reviewed and the record redated. Vendors are welcome to submit documentation. Nothing on this index is for sale, including a listing, a placement, or a grade.

AI Legal Index

The AI Legal Index is an independent index that tracks changes to AI vendors in legal. It holds 462 vendors across 9 categories, each graded on the same 15 capability axes and recorded against 12 legal signals, from public sources. No vendor pays for inclusion, placement, or rating.

Index Status
Last index update
October 16, 2026
The AI Legal Index is an editorial reference. It is not a regulatory body, not a law firm, and nothing published here is legal advice or a recommendation to retain or avoid a vendor. Records are verified against published sources, bar guidance and public court records. Where a record reads not addressed, the material was not located in public sources on the date shown. See the Methodology page for evaluation standards and limitations.
© 2026 AI Legal Index
3801 N Capital of Texas Hwy, Ste E240 · Austin, TX 78746