{"id":232198,"date":"2026-04-07T12:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/no-counsel-no-privilege-courts-signal-that-client-ai-use-may-fall-outside-attorney-client-privilege-bond-schoeneck-king-pllc\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T13:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T17:00:14","slug":"no-counsel-no-privilege-courts-signal-that-client-ai-use-may-fall-outside-attorney-client-privilege-bond-schoeneck-king-pllc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/no-counsel-no-privilege-courts-signal-that-client-ai-use-may-fall-outside-attorney-client-privilege-bond-schoeneck-king-pllc\/","title":{"rendered":"No Counsel, No Privilege: Courts Signal That Client AI Use May Fall Outside Attorney-Client Privilege | Bond Schoeneck &#038; King PLLC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/no-counsel-no-privilege-courts-signal-1473741\/\">No Counsel, No Privilege: Courts Signal That Client AI Use May Fall Outside Attorney-Client Privilege | Bond Schoeneck &#038; King PLLC<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/no-counsel-no-privilege-courts-signal-1473741\/\">https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/no-counsel-no-privilege-courts-signal-1473741\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-07 12:09:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.jdsupra.com\">www.jdsupra.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"date\">A recent decision in the Southern District of New York is continuing to garner attention in the legal community. In February, Judge Rakoff issued a landmark decision rejecting attorney\u2011client privilege and work\u2011product doctrine protections for documents generated using artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0United States v. Heppner, the Court addressed whether a criminal defendant\u2019s interactions with a publicly available generative AI platform, Claude, were privileged. The court held that both information entered into, and materials generated by, an AI tool were not protected by attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine. See United States v. Heppner, 2026 WL 436579 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 17, 2026).<\/p>\n<p>The court emphasized that attorney-client privilege\u00a0generally protects\u00a0only confidential communications between a client and an attorney, or an attorney\u2019s agent, made for the purpose of obtaining or\u00a0providing\u00a0legal advice. In Heppner, attorney-client privilege did not apply because, while this may be shocking, an AI tool is not an attorney or an attorney\u2019s agent.\u00a0 The Court also explained that the defendant was not seeking legal advice from the AI tool.\u00a0 Defendant later asserted that by sharing the AI-generated content with their counsel, the material should retroactively constitute privileged material or work product.\u00a0 This argument failed as well. In Heppner, the defendant created the documents without instruction or direction from counsel, and counsel did not direct the use of the AI platform for investigative or strategic purposes. Documents created independently, without attorney direction and later provided to counsel do not retroactively become privileged or protected work product. Furthermore, Judge Rakoff noted that Claude\u2019s terms of service expressly disclaimed the provision of legal advice and instructed users to consult qualified counsel. Judge Rakoff\u2019s decision also cautioned that use of publicly available AI tools risk loss of&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/no-counsel-no-privilege-courts-signal-1473741\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No Counsel, No Privilege: Courts Signal That Client AI Use May Fall Outside Attorney-Client Privilege&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/jdsupra-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/profile-images\/og.15417_0919.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-232198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-generative-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232200,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232198\/revisions\/232200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}