What should we do about AI access when a fee earner leaves the firm?

When someone leaves, their AI access should be closed off on the same day as their email, case management login and building pass. AI tools hold client information, so an account left open is a live confidentiality risk. The other half of the job is making sure anything useful they produced sits on the matter file, not inside an account that is about to be shut.

Put AI tools on the leaver checklist

Most firms already have a leaver process. It covers email, the practice management system, the document store, online filing portals, the Land Registry, Companies House, credit agencies and whatever else has a login. AI tools often escape it, because they were adopted later and sometimes by an individual rather than by the firm.

Add them explicitly. The checklist should name each approved AI tool, say who removes access, and record the date it was done. If your firm keeps a register of systems for data protection purposes, the AI tools belong on it, and the leaver process should follow that register rather than someone's memory.

It is also worth asking the leaver directly, in the exit conversation, whether they used any AI tool the firm does not know about. People answer that question honestly far more often when it is asked as routine admin than when it feels like an accusation.

What removing access actually means

"Account deleted" and "access removed" are not the same thing, and the difference matters.

• Deactivate the login. The person should no longer be able to sign in, from any device, from home or from a new employer.
• Check the device side. If they used the tool on a personal laptop or phone, a browser may still hold a session. Ending sessions centrally, not just changing a password, is the safer option.
• Remove second factors that belong to them. If they set up two-factor authentication or a passkey on a personal device, those should be detached with the account, not left hanging.
• Reassign, do not orphan. If the leaver was the administrator, or the only person who could see a particular matter, someone else needs that role before the account closes.
• Confirm in writing. A short note recording what was removed and when is the evidence you will want if a question is ever asked.

Tools that work through the browser and are tied to a verified work email address are easier to close down than anything installed locally or signed up for with a personal address. That is a good reason to insist on work email verification at the point a tool is approved, not at the point someone resigns.

Capture the work before the account closes

The bigger practical risk is not leakage; it is loss. If a fee earner has spent weeks working a matter with an AI tool, there may be chronologies, date calculations, research notes and draft passages sitting in that tool. If the file itself only contains the finished letters, whoever picks the matter up starts colder than they need to.

Before the last day, ask the leaver to go through their live matters and make sure anything the successor will need is saved to the file in the normal way. The test is simple: could a colleague open the matter file and understand the position without opening the AI tool at all?

This is the same principle as attendance notes. The file is the record. A tool is where some of the work happened, not where the record lives. It also means that if you later change tools, nothing of value is stranded.

Handover, supervision and the new fee earner

A leaver's matters usually go to someone else, sometimes several people. Two things are worth checking at that point.

First, access rights. If your AI tool controls what each person can see by matter, then the successor needs adding to the matters they have taken on, and only those. Seniority is not a reason to open everything up; the supervising partner should be able to see a matter because they are on it, not because of their title.

Second, assumptions. The successor is taking on conclusions someone else reached with help from a tool. Those conclusions still need checking against the underlying papers and the underlying law, exactly as they would if a departing colleague had left a handwritten note. Dates in particular should be re-derived and confirmed against the firm's own diary system rather than accepted because they appear in a summary.

The firm's account, not the individual's

Decide, before anyone leaves, whether AI accounts belong to the firm or to the person. They should belong to the firm. That means firm-controlled email domains, firm-level administration, and billing arrangements that do not sit on a personal card.

Where a tool is funded by credit rather than per-seat licences, closing one person's access should not disturb the firm's balance or anyone else's work. Where it is funded per seat, check what happens to the seat: whether it can be reassigned, and whether you are paying for someone who left months ago. That is a question to answer when you choose the supplier, not when the resignation lands.

Where Alesis fits

Alesis is an AI assistant for UK law firms, made by L25 Limited, used through the web browser, with one conversation for a matter. Every account proves its email address, and can add two-factor authentication and passkeys; inside a firm, people see only the matters they are on, and seniority alone grants no view. The firm's information is held in the UK and processed only in the UK and the EU, kept apart from every other firm, and never used to train anything for anyone else. Alesis is funded by credit, not a subscription, so there are no per-seat licences to reassign when someone moves on.