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AI Prompts as Work Product: The Civil Courts Answer Heppner
In March I argued that Heppner’s narrow view of AI work product would not survive contact with civil litigation. Three decisions, capped by the Nassau County order in Assini v. Hayward, have now protected a self-represented litigant’s ChatGPT history from discovery. They reach a defensible result through reasoning that borrows the wrong test and skips the analysis the result requires.
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Client-Side AI Recording and NYC Bar Formal Opinion 2025-6
The NYC Bar’s Formal Opinion 2025-6 addresses what happens when clients use their own AI tools to record and transcribe conversations with their lawyers. Read alongside Heppner, the opinion establishes one clear duty (warning clients of AI-related privilege risks) and suggests two further responses (providing privilege-preserving alternatives and redesigning communication channels) that the rules do not yet require but that firms should weigh in light of the foreseeability shift Heppner introduces.
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API Access and the Limits of Data-Handling Compliance
Using an LLM through an API rather than a consumer chatbot improves your data-handling posture, sometimes dramatically. But an API alone does not satisfy FERPA, HIPAA, or any other regulatory framework, and treating it as though it does mistakes a technical control for a legal one.
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Privilege and the Consumer Chatbot: Data Handling Across Claude's Tiers After Heppner
A comparison of Anthropic’s data-handling policies across Claude’s consumer and commercial tiers, and why the distinction now carries legal consequences after the SDNY’s decision in United States v. Heppner.
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