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Pasting a client letter into a chatbot can waive privilege

A solicitor who pastes a client letter into a public chatbot can breach confidentiality and lose legal professional privilege in the same moment. That warning now sits inside formal guidance for the profession in England and Wales. On 21 October 2026 the Law Society of England and Wales published a practice note on using artificial intelligence in legal practice. It reaches confidentiality, privilege, data protection, insurance and cyber security, and it applies to all solicitors and all types of legal practice.

Guidance, not regulation

The note describes itself as the Law Society’s view of good practice, and states that it is not legal advice. Artificial Lawyer points out that the Law Society is a representative body and not the official regulator of the profession. The note records that there is no AI-specific regulator for legal practice at present. Use of AI by solicitors is governed instead by existing obligations, including the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s Standards and Regulations.

Its central proposition is short. Liability cannot be transferred to an AI system, because the system has no separate legal personality. Nor does the use of agentic AI, a system that plans and carries out multi-step tasks with reduced human intervention, transfer or diminish professional responsibility. Law Society president Brett Dixon said that professional responsibility cannot be transferred to any AI system, and warned that over-reliance on such systems may cause a catastrophic gap in future legal skills.

Where privilege can be lost

The sharpest practical point concerns privilege. The note relies on a decision of the Upper Tribunal, UK v Secretary of State for the Home Department, neutral citation [2026] UKUT 81 (IAC), signed on 17 November 2025. A representative there told the tribunal what he had done. He had put client emails explaining Home Office decisions into ChatGPT. He had also uploaded Home Office decision letters for the tool to summarise for clients. At paragraph 60, Judge Fiona Lindsley wrote that uploading confidential documents into an open-source 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 added that such conduct should in any event be referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office. It drew a line at closed source tools, naming Microsoft Copilot, which it said can handle tasks such as summarising without those risks. The practice note is careful to add that no clear case law yet deals directly with privilege and AI use. Where an incident amounts to a serious breach of SRA regulatory arrangements, the firm must report it to the SRA promptly.

Checking the work, and telling the court

Two rules bite on daily practice. The note states that an AI system cannot reliably validate the accuracy of its own results. Putting one model’s output through another model will not satisfy professional obligations if the work turns out to be wrong. There is also no specific duty at present to tell a court that AI helped prepare a document. Responsibility follows the name on the document, whether or not AI was used. The Civil Justice Council consulted during 2026 on whether transparency rules are needed, published an update on its findings in June 2026, and expects a final report later in 2026.

What a firm has to be able to show

The insurance section turns governance into evidence. Under the Insurance Act 2015, a firm must disclose not only the risks it knows about but those it ought to know about, or would have found after reasonable enquiries. Professional indemnity cover must comply with the SRA minimum terms and conditions. The note says that being able to demonstrate that AI use is supervised, documented and subject to proportionate risk assessment helps when engaging with insurers.

No new rule was created on 21 October. Existing duties were mapped onto a new tool, and the mapping is where the work for firms now lies.

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