Your AI chats
can and will
be used against you
in a court of law.
A federal court just ruled that public AI conversations have no attorney-client privilege. Every chat is discoverable, subpoena-able, and admissible. Kovel wraps the same AI inside a real attorney relationship, so your legal thinking stays yours.
United States v. Heppner
A defendant's conversations with Claude AI were seized by the FBI and ruled fully discoverable. The court found no privilege because no attorney directed the use, no confidentiality protections existed on the platform, and the AI owed no fiduciary duty.
Public AI = public record
- No attorney-client privilege
- Inputs may be used for model training
- Discoverable by opposing counsel
- Subpoena-able by government
- Privacy policy permits disclosure
- No fiduciary duty to you
Protected by privilege
- Attorney-directed AI use (Kovel doctrine)
- Zero data training, zero retention
- Enterprise-grade confidentiality
- Formal attorney engagement letter
- Documented chain of privilege
- Licensed attorney on your matter
Sign up & match
Complete a brief intake. You're matched with a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction who formally engages you and directs your use of the platform.
Research freely
Use the full power of frontier AI to research, analyze, and organize your legal thinking. Every session runs through enterprise-grade, zero-retention infrastructure.
Stay protected
Your attorney relationship creates the legal shield. Documented attorney direction, confidential infrastructure, and a defensible privilege chain.
When the court said discoverable, millions of chats became evidence.
Michael Heppner, facing federal wire-fraud charges, used public Claude to draft a timeline of events, brainstorm defenses, and work through settlement scenarios. When the FBI executed a warrant on his cloud storage, the chat transcripts were seized along with other records.
Heppner moved to suppress the AI transcripts, arguing they were privileged. Judge Rakoff denied the motion.No attorney had directed the AI use. The platform's TOS permitted disclosure under legal process. The AI owed Heppner no fiduciary duty. All the pillars of privilege were missing.
But in the same opinion, Rakoff sketched the conditions under which AI chat couldbe privileged — direction by counsel, a privilege-preserving environment, and documentation. That's the operating manual Kovel was built on.
Heppner uses public Claude to brainstorm his defense
Roughly 180 hours of conversations about the indictment, opposing counsel's theory, and personal vulnerabilities.
FBI executes cloud-storage warrant
Claude transcripts recovered via the defendant's linked Google account backup.
Defense moves to suppress
Argues attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine apply.
Rakoff denies the motion
"Had counsel directed Heppner to use Claude, Claude might arguably be said to have functioned in a manner akin to a highly trained professional who may act as a lawyer's agent within the protection of the attorney-client privilege."
Every existing chat is a liability
Every draft, strategy note, and private reflection typed into a public AI is potentially an exhibit — unless it's wrapped in the Kovel framework.
Employment disputes
Wrongful termination, harassment, wage theft, non-compete battles. Organize timelines and draft demand letters under privilege.
Landlord–tenant issues
Warranty of habitability, security-deposit disputes, retaliatory eviction. Analyze your lease and draft formal notices.
Family & custody
Divorce logistics, parenting-plan drafting, asset division. Process the emotional strategy without it becoming evidence.
Contract review
Vendor contracts, NDAs, partnership agreements, SaaS terms. Stress-test clauses before you sign.
Immigration matters
Visa strategy, RFE responses, asylum claim preparation. Privileged space to reason through facts that matter.
Regulatory exposure
Compliance questions for small-business owners, licensed professionals, crypto founders, healthcare providers.
Personal-injury prep
Draft a chronology of the accident, assemble medical-cost tallies, and evaluate settlement offers with counsel.
Estate & probate
Will structures, trust decisions, executor disputes. Think through family dynamics without leaving an internet trail.
Whistleblowing prep
Evaluate reporting channels, document retention, and retaliation risk before you file.
Individual
- Matched with a licensed attorney
- Formal engagement letter
- Privileged AI research portal
- Zero data retention
- Demand letter service (1/quarter)
- Privilege documentation packet
Law Firm
- White-labeled firm portal
- Unlimited client portal seats
- Law Library: firm + client contexts
- Auto-generated engagement letters
- Privilege log integration
- Client onboarding workflows
- Priority support + compliance tools
Self-Hosted
- Runs on your own servers
- Air-gapped option available
- No data leaves your office
- Full model deployment
- Law Library: unlimited storage
- Dedicated implementation team
Give your AI the record. Keep the privilege.
The Law Library
Give your AI the context it needs to be useful. Upload case law, contracts, strategy playbooks, internal memos, and prior filings to create a custom knowledge base that informs every AI interaction.
Firms set context at the firm level (standard playbooks, jurisdiction-specific precedent, boilerplate language) or at the individual client level (case-specific documents, opposing counsel filings, deposition transcripts). The AI references this material in its research, making output immediately relevant to your actual matters.
Everything stays within the privilege-protected infrastructure. Nothing is used for training. Nothing leaves your environment.
Practice area playbooks
Standard operating procedures, jurisdiction-specific case law, preferred motion templates, and firm-wide legal research libraries.
Case-specific context
Upload contracts, filings, correspondence, depositions, and strategy documents. AI responses reference your actual case materials.
Privilege-preserved RAG
Retrieval-augmented generation within the privilege boundary. Documents indexed locally, never sent to third parties, never used for training.
Enterprise API endpoints with zero training
All model calls route through contractual zero-retention, zero-training endpoints — never the consumer-facing APIs that seeded Heppner's exposure.
Session memory only, client-controlled retention
Prompts and responses exist for the life of your session. You decide what persists to your Law Library; nothing else is stored.
TLS 1.3 in flight, AES-256 at rest
Law Library documents are encrypted at rest with per-matter keys. Keys are rotatable and revocable on attorney instruction.
US-only data residency
All infrastructure hosted in US-East with no cross-border replication. No subprocessors outside the US.
Privilege-log-ready audit trail
Every session records the directing attorney, the engagement scope, and the matter — exportable as an evidentiary log in any privilege challenge.
Attorney-in-the-loop disclosure
Any legal process served on Kovel triggers immediate notice to the directing attorney, with a defined protocol for privilege assertion.
A new revenue channel for your practice
Join the Kovel attorney network and receive matched clients who need lightweight advisory coverage. You set the scope. We handle the platform.
Clients come pre-qualified. You issue the engagement letter, direct their use of the AI portal, and are available for periodic consultation. Build your Law Library with firm-specific knowledge to make the AI more valuable for your clients.
Warm lead flow
Pre-qualified clients matched to your jurisdiction and practice area. No marketing spend required.
Low-touch revenue
Advisory retainer model. Direct AI use and periodic consultation. No full-service obligations.
White label + Law Library
Offer branded AI research with your firm's playbooks, precedent, and templates baked into every interaction.
Heppner-proof practice
Updated engagement letter templates, privilege documentation, and compliance workflows built in.
Is a Kovel conversation actually privileged, or is that just marketing?
Privilege in this context rests on the Kovel doctrine — United States v. Kovel, 296 F.2d 918 (2d Cir. 1961) — which extends attorney-client privilege to third-party agents engaged by counsel to facilitate legal advice. The canonical example is an accountant retained by a tax attorney.
Every Kovel account includes a real engagement letter with a licensed attorney who directs your use of the AI platform as part of legal advisory services. That attorney direction is what converts a generic AI chat into a privileged communication. Our infrastructure is the technical backing that makes the claim defensible in a privilege challenge.
What actually happens to my data?
Your prompts and the AI's responses exist for the duration of your active session and are discarded at session end unless you explicitly save them to your Law Library. We run every model call through enterprise endpoints that contractually prohibit training on inputs or outputs.
Anything you do save is encrypted at rest with per-matter keys and is only accessible to you and your matched attorney.
How is this different from just using my lawyer's email?
A real attorney is slow and expensive. Kovel gives you the research and thinking assistant of an AI — with privilege protection in place — so you can show up to your (human) attorney session having already organized the facts, drafts, and questions. It reduces the billable hours you owe while increasing the quality of the conversation.
Do I still have an attorney I can actually talk to?
Yes. Your Individual plan includes quarterly demand-letter service and on-demand consultation windows with your matched attorney. Some matters also qualify for full-scope representation with additional fees — your attorney will tell you when that's appropriate.
Is this legal advice?
Your attorney gives you legal advice. Kovel is the research environment they direct you to use. The AI outputs are research and analysis, not advice — and the platform explicitly routes high-stakes decisions back to the directing attorney.
What if I live in a state where the attorney network isn't live yet?
We're rolling out jurisdiction by jurisdiction, starting with NY, CA, TX, FL, IL, and DC. If you sign up and we don't yet have an attorney in your state, we'll hold your spot, pair you with a courtesy attorney licensed in a neighboring jurisdiction where permissible, and upgrade you when local counsel is available.
Can I cancel?
Monthly plans cancel anytime from your account page. Your engagement letter includes a termination clause and a defined process for retrieving or deleting your Law Library materials.
Can I use this for criminal matters?
Yes — and in fact the Kovel doctrine itself originated in a criminal tax case. The key is how you use Kovel relative to the stage of the matter.
Pre-charge(investigation, grand jury, target letter, worry about exposure): Kovel is ideal. You get a privileged research environment under general counsel's direction while you figure out whether and when to engage defense counsel.
Post-charge (charged, arraigned, in active defense): engage a criminal defense attorney as a specialist on that matter in Kovel. That attorney directs your AI research within the matter, and Kovel serves as their research infrastructure. The defense attorney runs the defense; Kovel supports it.
What Kovel doesn't do: we don't replace defense counsel, and our general-counsel master engagement doesn't cover courtroom representation. If your matter is approaching charges or already charged, you'll see a prompt inside the portal to request attorney review and match to a criminal defense specialist.
Stop giving away
your legal thinking.
Every prompt you type into a public AI is a potential exhibit. Kovel makes sure it stays yours.
Request beta access