Increasingly AI seems to be mostly downside. A legal chat bot without attorney-client privledge, also implies a medical chatbot may have no HIPAA protection. It renders the service unsafe and therefore unusable and maybe more importantly... unsalable.
> Prosecutors argued that they had a right to demand material that Heppner created with Claude because his defense lawyers were not directly involved, and because attorney-client privilege does not apply to chatbots.
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> Voluntarily revealing information from a lawyer to any third party can jeopardize the customary legal protections for those attorney communications.
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> Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled, opens new tab in February that Heppner must hand over 31 documents generated by Anthropic's chatbot Claude related to the case.
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> No attorney-client relationship exists "or could exist, between an AI user and a platform such as Claude," Rakoff wrote.
If I hand wrote some notes in a notebook or diary, I wouldn't have to hand them over, as I understand it, even with no lawyer in the mix. Same if I wrote some notes in a text file on my computer.
Leaving AI aside, what in particular makes this different from using any other cloud-based software? Does writing a Google Doc to gather my thoughts or a draft email in Gmail constituent "revealing information from a lawyer to a third party"?
What if Google have enabled AI-features on these? Feels like this area really needs clarity for users rather than waiting for courts to rule on it.
I don't think this is any different from other cloud-based software. Cloud providers can be compelled to turn over your data, as long as they're actually capable of doing so. If you don't want your data being snarfed up from a cloud provider and used in court, then only use cloud providers with end-to-end encryption, or better yet don't put your data in cloud providers at all.
The only reason this ruling is even remotely interesting is because people don't understand computer systems, and chatbots feel different. For the technologically minded, it should be pretty obvious that typing into a chatbot is no different from typing into a Google Doc, and that the data in both can be available to the legal system without the user's involvement or consent. But most people aren't technologically minded and may not have realized that all of their data is being saved and made available like that.
This is why you should have local models. The local models are good enough for private chats, they might not be as good as the cloud models for precise technical work, but for general sensitive chat you definitely should stick to local.
If you are the subject of a criminal investigation, they will seize the devices from your house and do forensics on them. Taking steps to make that harder could expose you to more charges for tampering with evidence.
(IANAL - in the US) I think it's worth clarifying that the third-party doctrine is probably what applies here. You used someone else's computer (Google search and the recorded search history, Claude and the conversation history, or cell phone providers and the tower ping records) and you had no expectation of privacy or any sort of confidentiality (e.g. lawyer/spouse/protected medical info).
I understand that other countries handle this differently and might have more privacy restrictions, but this seems to come down to a judge asking a neutral third-party to testify to what they know about a subject and them responding with search history/chat logs/location pings. I guess if you want to do crimes then you need to stop intentionally revealing incriminating evidence to unbound third-parties.
The obvious business opportunity here is for some lawyer to start running an AI service to do these kinds of things. Anyone who subscribes is a client of the lawyer, who owns the chatbot infrastructure, which would be protected under attorney client privilege.
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.
Again it comes back to the three elements of privilege: between an attorney and client; kept confidential; and for the purposes of legal advice. So for a phone call, I think that holds. There's a reasonable expectation of privacy on a phone line. I should note I'm not a lawyer but a SWE and I looked at Heppner closely RE: the privacy angle.
Of all the words to use in the title, they chose "prompts" when talking about AI. Had to read it twice because, if you assume the AI "prompts" equivalent, the whole title becomes gibberish.
Of all the weird shit people get into with AI chat bots (dating, therapy, thinking they're sentient), asking one questions about your court case seems like one of the most understandable, even if it's still dumb.
An aspect of AI that's really underdiscussed is just the basic switch from doing all your searches logged out to now being forced to be logged in somewhere. That much alone is disqualifying for me.
This seems plainly obvious -- chat bots are not attorneys. Why would they be privileged as such? You don't get attorney-client privilege when you put your legal questions into Google, or to sending them to anyone or anything else other than an attorney...
From the very beginning I've been extremely uneasy letting a corporation have access to my "chat like" interactions over a long period of time with their product.
I think it's insanely foolish to use these tools in these configurations.
If you must use AI you should be running it locally.
It will become increasingly difficult to argue that a particular transcript between someone and Claude isn't accurate, once Anthropic finishes tying those transcripts to your official identification with Persona. Wild times!
For 1), his reasoning shows how intelligent, well-read humans view AI which is quite different from the attitudes seen on HN. Rakoff calls the chats "Claude searches" which while it may sound ridiculous (what is this, Perplexity?) is just how some people must view this crazy new thing: another Google. You type stuff in and get results out.
2) Rakoff goes through the 3 elements of attorney client privilege in US law (communications between attorney and client, intended to be and kept confidential, and for the purpose of legal advice). It's obvious the Claude chats fail two of them and he goes over why.
3) A lot of people bring up the point that if you use Google Docs to transcribe privileged information, is that the same, since you send your data to Google? The model AI companies take when they cater to legal clients is akin to that of a locked filing cabinet in a storage facility: sure, you're sending the data to them, but with a ZDR they ain't looking at it or training on it.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 58.4 ms ] threadIf I hand wrote some notes in a notebook or diary, I wouldn't have to hand them over, as I understand it, even with no lawyer in the mix. Same if I wrote some notes in a text file on my computer.
Leaving AI aside, what in particular makes this different from using any other cloud-based software? Does writing a Google Doc to gather my thoughts or a draft email in Gmail constituent "revealing information from a lawyer to a third party"?
What if Google have enabled AI-features on these? Feels like this area really needs clarity for users rather than waiting for courts to rule on it.
The only reason this ruling is even remotely interesting is because people don't understand computer systems, and chatbots feel different. For the technologically minded, it should be pretty obvious that typing into a chatbot is no different from typing into a Google Doc, and that the data in both can be available to the legal system without the user's involvement or consent. But most people aren't technologically minded and may not have realized that all of their data is being saved and made available like that.
I understand that other countries handle this differently and might have more privacy restrictions, but this seems to come down to a judge asking a neutral third-party to testify to what they know about a subject and them responding with search history/chat logs/location pings. I guess if you want to do crimes then you need to stop intentionally revealing incriminating evidence to unbound third-parties.
You send a prompt to a neutral third party who then sends it to an AI model and then routes the response back to you?
Meanwhile, sensible people perform sensitive defense and prosecution related chats anonymously facilitated via local LLMs or cryptocurrency.
we need some kind of user-chat privilege much like doctors and their patients, or lawyers and their clients
I think it's insanely foolish to use these tools in these configurations.
If you must use AI you should be running it locally.
I don't want to give them ideas, but surely someone else would have thought of it after reading this article's headline.
For 1), his reasoning shows how intelligent, well-read humans view AI which is quite different from the attitudes seen on HN. Rakoff calls the chats "Claude searches" which while it may sound ridiculous (what is this, Perplexity?) is just how some people must view this crazy new thing: another Google. You type stuff in and get results out.
2) Rakoff goes through the 3 elements of attorney client privilege in US law (communications between attorney and client, intended to be and kept confidential, and for the purpose of legal advice). It's obvious the Claude chats fail two of them and he goes over why.
3) A lot of people bring up the point that if you use Google Docs to transcribe privileged information, is that the same, since you send your data to Google? The model AI companies take when they cater to legal clients is akin to that of a locked filing cabinet in a storage facility: sure, you're sending the data to them, but with a ZDR they ain't looking at it or training on it.
Another CRITICAL point here not mentioned in the article is Warner v Gilbarco; Gilbarco directly contradicts Heppner and indicates that work-product doctrine covers AI-generated chats! https://perkinscoie.com/insights/update/heppner-and-gilbarco...
The law is not settled.
I looked into on-premises AI for legal as a business idea but decided it's not a great idea right now.
Would a judge be able to demand the attorney hand over written notes from his clients?
I doubt it.
Why would this not apply to disclosure to a telephone company or email service provider too?
The real difference here is whether it's a communication between a lawyer and a client, or not.