[asdfasgasdgasdg]

No competent counsel would ever direct their client to perform legal research. So if a lawyer actually instructs you to do this the correct move is to get a new lawyer.

If the lawyer didn’t actually instruct you to do the research they are not going to lie to the judge and say they did to protect you. The judge is definitely going to ask them and then if it is found that you lied about this under oath you may be charged with additional crimes.

[flkiwi]

I agree with you, but I actually understand the issue they're raising. Counsel sends a draft demand letter to client and says "Please review and let me know of any issues with my description of the underlying claims." Client responds with an inline note stating that she feels the claim is overstated but that she wants to leave it in for leverage. The draft is, transparently and without notice, processed through the user's O365 Copilot integration in both Word and Outlook. Hell, let's assume the attorney is a sole practitioner using a regular O365 account, and the outbound request to the client is silently run through Copilot. What is the status of privilege in this situation? Both seem to fail the confidentiality test. Does that mean that privilege exists only for big law firms that negotiate enterprise O365 licenses with no training clauses? There's definitely tension here.

But both your scenario and the OOP behavior of the client are not particularly hard ones to resolve.

[qingcharles]

This isn't true in all cases. I've known plenty of lawyers who understand that their clients sometimes have vastly more time to work on the case than they do, especially in criminal defense, and will gladly tell their clients to find relevant case law etc if they think their clients are adequately intelligent to the job.