Can we use AI on a matter behind an information barrier?

Yes, provided the AI tool enforces access the same way your file store does: matter by matter, for named people, with no override for seniority. An information barrier fails the moment a tool lets someone outside the ring see papers, summaries or questions from inside it. So the question to put to a supplier is not "is it secure" but "who, inside our firm, can see this matter and what we asked about it".

What the barrier actually has to hold back

A barrier is not only about documents. When a firm puts one up, usually because it is acting on both sides of a boundary, or because a former client's confidential information sits somewhere in the building, it is trying to stop four things crossing:

• The papers themselves.
• Anything derived from the papers: summaries, chronologies, schedules, drafts.
• The fact and shape of the instruction, which can be as revealing as the detail.
• Casual conversation between people on either side.

An AI tool touches the first three directly. A matter conversation that contains a chronology and a draft advice is, in substance, a working file. If it sits somewhere that everyone in the firm can open, you have made a second copy of the matter outside the barrier.

Five questions to put to the supplier

1. Is access granted per matter, or per firm? If every user in the firm can open every conversation by default, the tool cannot sit behind a barrier without a workaround, and workarounds decay.
2. Does seniority override access? Many systems quietly give partners or administrators a view of everything. That is the opposite of what a barrier requires. A managing partner outside the ring should see nothing inside it, including the fact that the matter exists.
3. Who can see the question, not just the answer? Prompts often contain confidential detail: names, figures, the point the client is worried about. Confirm that search, history and usage reporting do not expose the text of questions across the firm.
4. What do administrators see? Someone has to manage users and billing. Make sure that role does not come with a window into matter content, and that it can be held by someone neutral.
5. Can access be removed cleanly? Barriers change. People move teams, matters conclude, screens come down. You need to be able to add and remove individuals from a matter and see who had access when.

Get the answers in writing and keep them with your conflicts record, not in an email chain.

The risk is usually the person, not the software

Most barrier failures involving technology are not clever breaches. They are ordinary slips:

• A fee earner outside the ring is asked a quick question by a colleague and pastes a few pages into a tool to help.
• Someone starts a conversation in the wrong matter and the content ends up filed where it should not be.
• A general question is typed with enough specific detail that the matter is identifiable to anyone who reads it later.
• A consumer tool is used on a personal account because the approved tool was slow that afternoon.

The answer is the same as it has always been for barriers: tell people what the barrier covers, name who is inside it, and make the compliant route the easy one. If the approved tool is slow or awkward, people route around it, and the barrier is only as strong as its least patient user.

Practical steps when a barrier goes up

When you raise a barrier, add AI access to the checklist you already run for case management, email and the document store. In practice that means:

• Decide who is inside the ring before anyone opens a conversation about the matter.
• Create the matter in the AI tool with that list and no one else, including the supervising partner if they are outside it.
• Record the decision in the conflicts file, with the date and who approved it.
• Brief the team in writing that no part of the matter goes into any other tool, personal or firm.
• Review the list when people join or leave the team, and when the matter concludes.

If you cannot restrict access in the tool, do not use the tool on that matter. Working without AI on one file is a small cost. Explaining a crossed barrier to a client, or to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, is not.

Two cases where extra care pays

The first is the former client problem, where the barrier exists because someone in the firm holds information from a previous retainer. Here the risk runs the other way: the concern is not that the new team learns something, but that the old matter's papers are drawn into a new conversation. Keep matters separate rather than merging them for convenience.

The second is the small firm with shared support staff. A secretary or paralegal who works for both teams is a barrier risk in any system. Decide which side of the ring they sit on, and give them access accordingly, rather than assuming a general support role justifies a general view.

Where Alesis fits

Alesis keeps one conversation for a matter, and inside a firm people see only the matters they are on; seniority alone grants no view. A firm's information is held in the UK, processed only in the UK and the EU, kept apart from every other firm, and never used to train anything for anyone else. Every account proves its email address, and can add two-factor authentication and passkeys. Alesis assists qualified professionals and does not replace them, and it does not provide legal advice.