Legal professional privilege and AI: what is acceptable, what is not.

A lawyer's legal professional privilege is general, absolute and unlimited in time. Is that compatible with a tool that reads the firm's email? Yes — under the same conditions as any provider, plus a few requirements specific to AI.

The framework: lawyers may use third parties

A firm already passes privileged data through its email host, its practice-management software vendor, sometimes its accountant. The profession accepts this use of third parties, provided the provider is contractually bound to confidentiality and the lawyer stays in control. An AI tool falls within the same framework.

The requirements specific to AI

• ✓No training on your data. The red line: models trained on a firm's email can reproduce fragments elsewhere. The commitment not to do so must be in writing.
• ✓Strict isolation per firm. Each firm in its own environment, no data shared between the vendor's clients.
• ✓Full traceability. Every read, every filing, every draft logged: the ethics officer must be able to reconstruct who saw what.
• ✓Human control. Nothing goes out, nothing is committed without approval by a member of the firm.

The question of location

Hosting in the European Union is not just a sales argument: it determines the law applicable to the data and the exposure to extraterritorial legislation. For email covered by privilege, it is a disqualifying criterion, not a preference.

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