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by mywittyname 57 days ago
Because it's the law misunderstanding technology.

Chatbots are not people. They are computer programs. And there's no other realm I can think of where merely interfacing with a computer program breaks attorney-client privilege.

It is equivalent to saying an email to your lawyer breaks privilege because you communicated with gmail. And it gets turbofucked when you consider that a program may be sending your information to an LLM. Would this same judge rule that having copilot installed in Outlook also breaks privilege because they "chatted with an outside party" while drafting an email (even if they didn't intend to send it to copilot)?

I can't think of a reason this isn't about the technology.

1 comments

I do think we generalize too much, and "merely interfacing with a computer program" is too big a generalization. I could imagine that a videochat with your lawyer is protected because the very definition includes client / lawyer communications, ie., a "video chat with your lawyer" cannot happen without you and your lawyer yet there it is, both interfacing with a videochat program.

A chat with a chatbot never needs a lawyer to be a "chat with a chatbot" lol