“Am I risking privilege by using this?”

It is the question every barrister has to settle before client material goes anywhere near an AI tool, and most are left to settle it alone. This article does the analysis in plain English: what actually happens to your material, how we think that maps onto the rules you already practise under, and what sensible use looks like.

What actually happens

It goes to a model provider, under contract. When you run research or ask a question of a brief, your material travels over an encrypted connection to an AI model provider, under commercial terms that bind it to confidentiality. That is the same legal architecture as the providers your practice already runs on: your email host, your cloud document store, your chambers' IT.

Never trained on. Not kept, once you select Private.* Your material travels to AI model providers under contract, used only to produce your result. Select Private and no model provider keeps your Memo or conversation. Brief analysis stores nothing with the provider once the response is returned.

*Private is always available. If you don't select it, the model provider may retain a Memo, or a Chat conversation and its follow-up questions, for up to 30 days to check for abuse, as its terms require, and then delete it. Training is excluded either way. Your sessions and memos stay saved in your Barrister AI account, whichever you choose.

It trains nothing. Nothing you research, upload or draft is used to train any AI model. Not as a setting you have to find and switch off — as the standing arrangement with our model providers, applying to every request, on every tier.

Nobody browses your work. Our own staff work against pseudonymous references, with your identity held separately from your activity. Joining the two back together requires a specific, logged reason through an audit-logged path. There is no screen where someone can casually see whose work is whose.

The professional rules

Confidential disclosure to a provider is ordinary practice. Barristers hand client material to service providers under confidentiality every working day: chambers IT, transcription, cloud document storage, the email system every brief passes through. In our view, your professional rules accommodate that: disclosure to a provider, for the purposes of your engagement, under confidentiality, is not a breach of the duty, and we think Barrister AI stands in that line. The NSW Bar says the duty of confidentiality applies in full when you use any AI tool, so this too is for you to weigh.

Why we think privilege should survive it, and where the risk remains. Privilege is waived by acting inconsistently with the confidentiality of a communication — showing it to the other side, or to the world. In our view, confidential disclosure to a service provider bound to keep it confidential is not that, and the analysis is the same as emailing a brief through your email provider. That is our reasoning, not a ruling. The NSW and Queensland Bar guidelines warn that putting material into AI tools can put privilege at risk, and the Queensland Bar says that, as a general rule, sensitive information should not go into prompts. Read how your material is handled, consider the matter in front of you, and form your own view.

The AI guidance asks more than where your data goes. On data, here are our answers. Your material goes to model providers under confidentiality contracts, as set out on our security page. No AI model provider trains on it, and with Private none keeps it. Staff do not browse your work in routine operations: they work against pseudonymous references, and linking your identity to your work needs a specific, logged reason. Account deletion is available on request. The rest of the guidance is for you to meet: verify every reference and proposition yourself, exercise your own judgment, and consider what to tell your client.

Sensible practice

• Select Private for your most sensitive matters, so that no model provider retains the Memo or conversation.
• Verify every citation and every proposition attributed to a case or statute yourself, and don't rely on an AI tool alone to do it.
• Consider what to tell your client. The bar guidelines ask you to be open about AI use and to consider whether disclosure or consent is needed, especially for privileged or confidential material.
• Check the court's rules before entering suppressed, subpoenaed or Harman undertaking material, or material under a statutory publication ban. In the NSW Supreme Court, Practice Note SC Gen 23 bars it from any generative AI program unless you are satisfied of three conditions: it stays in a controlled environment under confidentiality restrictions, it is used only for that proceeding, and it is not used for training. Other courts differ. Keep a record of the checks you made.
• Satisfy yourself once, properly. Read this page and the security page the way you read your cloud provider's terms when your practice moved to the cloud — then file the analysis.
• Where a name adds nothing to the legal question, leave it out. Not because the tool needs it removed — because minimisation costs nothing.

What to avoid

• Don't put client material into any AI tool until you have read its terms and settings. The risk is greatest with public tools that may train on what you type, but the bar guidance also reaches paid versions and software built for lawyers, including tools like this one.
• Don't rely on any tool whose retention terms you cannot state.
• Don't outsource judgment. What you advise and what you file remain yours; the tool extends your reach, it does not sign your name.

This page is our analysis, not advice. It explains in plain English how Barrister AI handles your material and how that maps onto the professional framework barristers practise under — it is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for your own judgment in a particular matter. Where a matter carries obligations beyond the ordinary — statutory secrecy, suppression orders, national security — apply the care those already demand.

The security page sets out the full controls.