Disclosure: I co-founded Mitosis Labs, which runs Private SuperIntelligence. This is an adaptation of the original guide written for estate clients. General information for clients, not legal advice.
If you type facts about your estate plan or a dispute into a public AI chatbot on your own, a federal court has held that those chats are not protected by attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine.
What Heppner held, and what it did not
In United States v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y., February 2026), Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled that a defendant's conversations with the consumer version of Claude were open to government inspection. Bradley Heppner was indicted in October 2025 on fraud and false-statement charges. After a grand jury subpoena, he used Claude on his own to prepare defense-strategy reports. FBI agents seized about 31 documents. The court called it "a question of first impression nationwide."
Because Claude is not an attorney, that alone disposed of the privilege claim. Anthropic's privacy policy said it may disclose data to third parties, including "governmental regulatory authorities". He used Claude "of his own volition". Sharing outputs with counsel later did not make them privileged. Privileged facts he typed in were treated as waived "just as if he had shared it with any other third party."
It is one criminal trial court. It does not bind other courts and does not address a trust contest. Proskauer and Debevoise leave open an enterprise tool with stronger terms. The court suggested AI used at counsel's direction might function like a lawyer's agent. It did not decide that question.
The client habit, and the lawyer's rule
Anthropic's Free, Pro and Max plans keep chats for five years if training is allowed, 30 days if not. ABA Formal Opinion 512 (July 29, 2024) says a lawyer needs informed consent before entering your matter into a self-learning tool, and a boilerplate engagement clause is not enough. Those duties bind the lawyer. Nothing in the ethics rules stops you from using a chatbot yourself. Talk to your lawyer first.
We built Private SuperIntelligence as an AI concierge Mitosis Labs sets up and runs for one family, from the hardware to the choice of model provider to where the data is stored. The provider keeps no copy of the work. No tool by itself makes a conversation privileged.
Private SuperIntelligence takes a limited number of families at a time so every one gets the same standard of service. Book a private call (ref ACP1-DEV) to talk through your office with Alex Morris.
Prakshal Jain (PJ), Co-founder and CTO, Private SuperIntelligence (by Mitosis Labs)
Alexander Morris, Co-founder and CEO, Private SuperIntelligence (by Mitosis Labs)
Originally published at privatesuperintelligence.si.
Sources: Heppner memorandum https://www.hrlegalist.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/03/1-United-States-v.-Heppner.pdf ; Proskauer Feb 18 2026 https://www.proskauer.com/alert/sdny-addresses-privilege-and-work-product-implications-of-using-unsecured-public-AI-tools ; Debevoise Feb 2026 https://www.debevoise.com/insights/publications/2026/02/update-judge-rakoff-issues-written-opinion-that-ai ; HLR Blog Mar 23 2026 https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2026/03/united-states-v-heppner/ ; ABA Formal Opinion 512 https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/professional_responsibility/ethics-opinions/aba-formal-opinion-512.pdf ; Anthropic Aug 28 2025 https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms
Top comments (0)