I’m not an AI sceptic — this practice offers a lawyer’s review of AI-drafted documents precisely because the tools are useful. But there’s a habit worth pausing on: dropping a real contract into a chatbot to “have it take a look.” Here’s what actually happens when you do.
Most commercial documents contain the other side’s confidential information, and most contain a confidentiality clause governing who you’re allowed to share them with. A public AI service is a third party. Pasting the document into it can be a disclosure you specifically promised not to make — and that’s true whether or not anything bad ever happens to the data. The breach is the sharing, not the leak.
A typical confidentiality clause says something like: don’t disclose to anyone except named representatives, on a need-to-know basis, who are themselves bound by equivalent confidentiality obligations. A chatbot is not on that list and is not bound by your NDA. Some newer agreements now address AI tools directly, one way or the other. The two minutes it takes to check the confidentiality clause is a lot cheaper than explaining the breach later.
It depends entirely on the tool and the plan you’re on. Consumer tiers of many AI products may retain your input and use it to improve their models; business and enterprise tiers frequently commit, in writing, not to. If you’re going to use AI on anything sensitive, use a tier whose data terms actually protect you — and understand which one you’re on. “It’s probably fine” is not a data-handling policy.
Solicitor-client privilege protects legal advice from disclosure, but it can be weakened when third parties are brought inside the conversation. If you’re using a public AI tool to get quasi-legal answers about a live matter, you may be creating a record outside the privileged circle — one that isn’t protected the way a conversation with your lawyer would be. This is one of the clearest reasons a lawyer’s review belongs on top of AI, not instead of it.
Contracts are full of names, compensation, and other personal information. The moment that goes to a third-party processor, Canadian privacy law — PIPEDA, Quebec’s Law 25, and the provincial regimes — is potentially in play, with its own consent and handling obligations. It’s easy to forget that an employment agreement or a shareholder list is also a pile of personal data.
Used with a little care, AI is a real help on documents. The trouble comes from treating a public tool as if it were a private one. If you’re not sure whether something is safe to paste, that’s a good question to ask before you do.
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