Clients with questions about their employment or wrongful termination case are turning to AI for help, just like in every other area of life. It is fast, it is free, and it never makes you feel foolish for asking. Is it a good idea? And what are the risks?
Knowledge is power, and AI seems to offer an endless pool of it. So taking your lawyer’s advice and running it through a chatbot must give you superhero power, right?
Not so fast.
A Quick Refresher on Attorney-Client Privilege
Hopefully your lawyer has explained the attorney-client privilege. It is a legal rule that protects private communications between a lawyer and their client. A waiver happens when that protection is given up. That can occur through:
- Intentional waiver: you or your lawyer chooses to disclose what was said.
- Accidental or implied waiver: forwarding your lawyer’s email to an outsider, bringing a non-essential person into a meeting with your lawyer, or producing a confidential document to the opposing side in litigation.
- Putting the advice at issue: claiming in court that you acted lawfully because your lawyer told you to.
Once the privilege is waived, it is waived. The other side can then require you to answer questions about your conversations with your attorney. That can be embarrassing. Worse, it can damage your case.
Where AI Comes In
Asking a public AI tool such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok about information you received from your lawyer can risk waiving that privilege.
The privilege protects communications made in confidence. Under California Evidence Code section 952, a communication is confidential only if it is not disclosed to third persons outside those necessary to accomplish the legal representation. A consumer chatbot is not your lawyer, not your lawyer’s paralegal, and not a person helping deliver legal services to you. It is a company that stores your inputs, may review them, and can be compelled to produce them.
This is no longer theoretical. In February 2026, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York held in United States v. Heppner — described as a question of first impression nationwide — that a defendant’s written exchanges with a consumer generative AI platform were protected by neither the attorney-client privilege nor the work product doctrine. The chat logs were fair game.
Two related points matter for employees:
Sending it to your lawyer afterward does not fix it. Forwarding your prompts or an AI-generated summary to your attorney after the fact does not retroactively wrap them in privilege. A document that was not confidential when created does not become confidential by being emailed to counsel.
The chat itself is never inherently privileged. Interacting with an AI program is not a confidential communication with a licensed attorney. There is no lawyer on the other end and no professional duty of confidentiality attached.
What This Means in Practice
None of this makes AI useless. Researching general questions — how California’s three-year deadline for FEHA claims works, what “constructive discharge” means, what to expect at a deposition — does not involve disclosing anything confidential, because you are not sharing case-specific information.
The line is the facts of your case. Do not paste in your lawyer’s emails, your termination documents, your declaration drafts, your settlement numbers, or your candid assessment of your own weak spots. Do not type out the strategy conversation you just had.
If you have a question about your case, ask your lawyer. That conversation is protected. The one with the chatbot is not.
The Rutten Law Firm is here to help with your questions about AI, and with your Employment Law or Wrongful Termination case.
Free consultations. No recovery means no fee.