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Should we give clients direct access to our AI tool?
Almost always no. The matter file holds material a client should not see unfiltered, and any answer a client reads is the firm's answer. Share reviewed output instead of handing over the tool.
Alesis · · 5 min read
For most firms the answer is no. A matter file contains material that is not suitable for the client to read unfiltered, and anything a client reads from your system will be treated as coming from the firm, whether or not a fee earner looked at it first. The better route is to keep the tool inside the firm and give clients the output a fee earner has reviewed.
This is a different question from putting a chatbot on your website for enquiries. Here the client is a real client, on a live matter, asking about their own papers. The instinct is understandable: they are paying, the papers are largely theirs, and they would like answers at ten o'clock at night without emailing you.
The file is not the same as the client's papers
A matter file is wider than the documents the client gave you. By the time a matter is running it is likely to hold:
- material from the other side, sometimes provided on terms that limit its use
- counsel's advice and your own candid assessment of the case, including the parts you have presented gently
- attendance notes recording what the client said, which is not always what they remember saying
- internal notes on costs, funding, risk and the client's own conduct
- in family and some private client matters, information about third parties who have not consented to the client reading it
An assistant that answers from the file will answer from all of it unless something stops it. Deciding what a client sees and when is a judgement call that belongs to the fee earner, and it changes through the life of a matter. A general access switch cannot make that call.
Joint and corporate clients make this sharper. Two executors, two buyers, a company with a chief executive and a finance director: they are not always aligned, and giving all of them the same open window into the file can expose disagreements or confidences you were holding carefully.
Whatever the client reads, your firm said it
The Solicitors Regulation Authority expects a firm to supervise the work it does and to give clients a competent service. If a client asks a question through your tool, gets an answer, and acts on it, the client will say your firm advised them. Your indemnity insurer is unlikely to be impressed by the argument that no solicitor saw it.
This is also a complaints problem. The Legal Ombudsman deals with service complaints, and "the system told me the deadline was in March" is a complaint you cannot easily answer if nobody reviewed the answer. An AI assistant answers the question it is asked. A client may ask the wrong question, leave out the fact that matters, or read a cautious answer as a promise.
There is a timing point too. Clients ask about outcomes, value and prospects. Those answers need framing, context and often a conversation. Delivered cold at midnight, they do damage.
Access control questions you would have to answer
If a firm did decide to open access, it would need to settle all of the following before anyone logs in:
- Who in the client organisation is authorised, and who removes them when they leave or fall out with the board.
- How the client's identity is verified, and whether two-factor authentication is required.
- Which documents on the matter are visible and who maintains that list as papers arrive daily.
- What happens to the conversation history, whether it forms part of the file, and whether it is disclosable.
- Whether your engagement terms and your privacy notice cover it, and what the client is told about the limits of the answers.
- Who is on call when a client reads something that alarms them.
Most firms of four to fifty fee earners will look at that list and conclude the cost of doing it properly outweighs the convenience.
What to do instead
Give clients the benefit without giving them the controls.
- Use the tool yourself to produce the update, the chronology or the summary of where things stand, review it, then send it. The client gets a faster, clearer update and a human has stood behind it.
- When a client sends a list of questions, work through them with the assistant against the file, check each answer against the page it came from, and reply in one go.
- Say in your client care letter how you use AI internally, in plain terms, and say that advice always comes from a named fee earner.
- If a client asks for direct access, explain why: parts of the file are not theirs to read, and an unreviewed answer is not advice. Clients usually accept that.
If a client wants faster answers, the realistic fix is a better rhythm of updates, not a login.
Where Alesis fits
Alesis is an AI assistant for UK law firms, used through the web browser, with one conversation for a matter. It answers questions about a matter from the matter's own papers and names the page each answer came from, so a fee earner can check before anything reaches the client. Inside a firm, people see only the matters they are on, and seniority alone grants no view. It prepares drafts for a qualified person to review and sign off, it does not file, serve or email anything, and it does not provide legal advice.
