AI chatbots are now part of everyday life, and it is natural to want help making sense of a stack of legal papers. But uploading documents from your case to a personal AI account (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot or any similar app) can put confidential information and legal protections at risk. In some proceedings, it may also breach restrictions on sharing case information. In this article, Senior Associate Zoe Heron explains why.
Why confidentiality matters
What you tell your solicitor, and the advice they give you, is normally protected by legal professional privilege. Privilege means the prosecution, or the court generally cannot make you hand that material over. But privilege depends on the material staying confidential. Once confidentiality is lost, privilege can be lost with it.
When you upload a document to a consumer AI service, you are sending it to a technology company, on that company’s terms. Depending on the product and your settings, your conversation may be stored, reviewed by staff, used to train future models, or disclosed to third parties, including authorities, in the circumstances the provider’s privacy policy allows.
On the 17th August 2026 the Solicitors Regulation Authority published an official warning notice addressing the issue of artificial intelligence in the legal profession. It warned that both free and paid AI systems may pose risks to client confidentiality, and that legal professional privilege may be permanently lost. It emphasises the need for suitable contractual, technical and organisational safeguards to protect confidential information, rather than relying simply on the product’s name or whether a subscription has been paid.
What the courts have said
The Upper Tribunal: “the public domain”
In UK and R (Munir) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKUT 81 (IAC), a panel of three Upper Tribunal judges dealt with advisers whose work had included AI-generated errors. One adviser explained that he had uploaded client emails and Home Office decision letters to ChatGPT to summarise and improve them. The Tribunal said (at paragraph 21):
“…to put client letters and decision letters from the Home Office into an open source AI tool, such as ChatGPT, is to place this information on the internet in the public domain, and thus to breach client confidentiality and waive legal privilege…”
The Tribunal contrasted this with “closed source AI tools which do not place information in the public domain such as Microsoft Copilot, are available for tasks such as summarising without these risks”. This was said in a professional-conduct hearing rather than a dispute over privilege, so it is a strong judicial warning rather than a binding ruling.
It is the first time a court or tribunal in England and Wales has linked public AI tools to the loss of privilege, and it is likely to be cited.
The United States: a defendant’s AI chats handed to prosecutors
In United States v Heppner (S.D.N.Y., No. 25-cr-503, opinion of 17 February 2026), a man under criminal investigation used a public AI chatbot (Claude) to work through his situation. He entered information he had learned from his lawyers into Claude and used it to prepare reports outlining potential defence arguments. When the FBI seized his devices and found the AI documents, he asserted privilege over them.
On February 6, 2026, the Government moved for a ruling that the AI documents were not protected by attorney-client privilege. Judge Rakoff decided that the AI documents lacked the first two, if not three of the privilege’s required elements. First, the communications were not between a client and his or her attorney. As Judge Rakoff put it, “Because Claude is not an attorney, that alone disposes of Heppner’s claim of privilege.” He also noted that when the Government asked Claude whether it could give legal advice, it replied that it was not a lawyer.
US decisions do not bind courts here, but the reasoning rests on the same basic principle as English law: no confidentiality, no privilege.
Extra risks in criminal, family and mental health cases
In some proceedings, the law restricts what you can do with case papers, and those restrictions apply whether or not anyone else ever sees what you uploaded.
Criminal cases: prosecution disclosure
Under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, section 17 restricts how unused material disclosed by the prosecution may be used or shared, mainly to purposes connected with your case. Knowingly using or disclosing that material in contravention of section 17 is a contempt of court under section 18, punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment in the Crown Court. Whether uploading disclosure to an AI provider breaches section 17 remains untested, but nobody should want to be the test case.
Separately, as Heppner shows, anything you type into a chatbot about your case (your account of events, your worries, your theories) could end up being seized and read.
Family cases involving children
Proceedings under the Children Act 1989 are typically held in private to safeguard the welfare and privacy of the child involved.
Under section 12(1) of the Administration of Justice Act 1960, publishing information about them can be a contempt of court unless it is authorised by the Family Procedure Rules (rules 12.73 and 12.75 and Practice Direction 12G) or by the court.
The Court of Appeal has confirmed in the case of Griffiths v Tickle [2022] EWCA Civ 465 that “most forms of dissemination whether oral or written amount to ‘publication’ for this purpose”, paragraph 7. In that case, an experienced barrister was found to have possibly committed a contempt by sending a skeleton argument to a third party without permission, even though he acted in good faith.
An AI company is not on the list of people you can share family court papers with.
Mental health tribunal cases
With mental health cases, publishing information about the proceedings can be a contempt of court under section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960. In Wales, rule 10(1) of the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales Rules 2008 also states unless the Tribunal gives a direction to the contrary, information about proceedings before the Tribunal and the names of any persons concerned in such proceedings must not be made public.
It can therefore be deemed that tribunal reports, medical evidence and decisions should not be uploaded to AI tools.
“But I pay for a private account”
Paid and business versions of AI tools often offer stronger privacy settings, and the Upper Tribunal in Munir accepted that properly closed systems are different. But a personal subscription is not the same as a closed system, the terms change over time, and the protections depend on settings most people never check. More importantly, privacy settings do not help with the court-rule restrictions above. A breach of section 17 or section 12 does not depend on anyone else reading the material.
What we recommend
- Do not upload statements, disclosure, police interview records, expert or medical reports, social work reports, court orders, judgments, or letters from us to any AI tool.
- Do not type in the details of your case, the people involved, or the advice we have given you.
- If something is hard to understand, ask us. Explaining your papers and our advice is part of our job.
- If you have already uploaded something, tell your lawyer as soon as possible so we can assess any risk to your case. Please do not try to fix it by deleting things without talking to us first.
- If you use AI for general background (for example, what a type of hearing involves), keep it general and check anything important with us. AI tools regularly get the law wrong.
The information in this article is correct as of October 2026. AI and its regulation are developing rapidly, so it is important to check the latest position. If you have questions about your own case, please speak to Reeds Solicitors LLP.
About the Author
Zoe Heron is a Senior Associate and Chartered Legal Executive Advocate in Reeds’ Private Crime Team. She represents clients at police stations and in the Magistrates’ Court, assists with complex sexual offence cases and has extensive experience in military law, including court martial and disciplinary proceedings.
If you would like legal advice, contact our specialist team by calling 0333 240 7373 or email [email protected]
