people point out in sibling comments that is phone call then be out of client-attorney privileges? since it goes through a "3rd party"? maybe not the call itself but the voicemail for example. can it be "extracted" for the same purpose?

another point to make it safer would be sharing the "chat" with the lawyer, this way it becomes media of communication.

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asdfasgasdgasdg 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, what type of phone call? You mean a phone call between a lawyer and a client? If so, then, of course it is protected, because it is communication between the lawyer and the client. It is not a good analogy for Claude chats because those chats are not communication between a laywer and a client.

The concept of sharing the chat with the lawyer will not work, since as the ruling points out, you cannot turn a non-privileged document into a privileged one by sharing it with your lawyer after the fact.

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impossiblefork 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think it's communication at all. Instead, I think it's a kind of lookup. Dealing with an LLM is searching a database. You are looking up legal texts in order to prepare legal arguments.

I think the principled way of treating this is that it's privileged for the purpose of preparing legal arguments, but not privileged in general. I think this can be supported using the existing law.

Presumably a lawyer's Google searches with terms like "what article is X" etc. are privileged too, since they are used for preparing legal arguments. That it uses AI doesn't suddenly make it communication.

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avaer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It is not a good analogy for Claude chats because those chats are not communication between a laywer and a client.

How is it not? I get that a chatbot is not a person with rights. And NAL.

But for all intents and purposes, it is a communication about legal advice. The way a lot of people use it is legal advice. They will continue to use it that way.

So for the law to then turn around and say that it's evidence that will be used against them is kind of messed up. It means confidentiality of your case is bought by paying a lawyer for legal protection, not because you actually need their advice over a chatbot's.

	▲	compass_copium 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's not a communication with a lawyer, though. Asking a guy on the street if it's illegal to sell the meth you have in your pocket is not privileged communication, and he could definitely testify about that after you got arrested!
	▲	simonreiff 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		It's not a communication if only one human person participates in the conversation. That's just enhanced note-taking and generating. I don't agree with the notion that talking to an LLM is disclosure to a third party because an LLM is neither a natural person nor even an artifical person recognized at law like a corporation, trust, LLC, etc.
	▲	asdfasgasdgasdg 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Because as you correctly point out the chatbot is not an attorney. Thus no attorney client privilege.
	▲	salawat 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Government decides not to make it's own ability to make a case and use what you do against any more difficult. More at 11.

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jerf 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The law has a concept of a "carrier" [1], and has the ability to judge whether or not the carrier in question is responsible for what it is carrying.

I'm not making a blanket statement that that means everything is a carrier, because a good chunk of the page I linked is devoted to endless legal nuances and I defer the details of the concept to those who know better. I'm just saying that the law has a well-established concept for this sort of situation, such that it is not the case that just because a third party is involved instantly all protections dissolve. If you really want to dig into the details, that's something an AI that hits the web and digests things would be pretty good at, as long as you're not planning on legal action based on that. Sometimes the hardest part of learning about something is just finding the term for it that lets you dig in.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

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SpicyLemonZest 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> another point to make it safer would be sharing the "chat" with the lawyer, this way it becomes media of communication.

This guy made the same argument, but as the court detailed, this is a misunderstanding of attorney-client privilege. Sharing an unprivileged conversation with your lawyer doesn't make it privileged. A phone call to your lawyer is privileged, but a phone call to your cousin Jimbo about what you should tell your lawyer is not.