Privileged AI. Governed at the matter boundary.
Law firms and legal departments face unique AI governance challenges: attorney-client privilege, ethical walls, legal hold obligations, and regulatory filing confidentiality. AI-assisted legal research, contract analysis, and due diligence create data paths that carry privileged matter into AI endpoints never designed to protect it. Arbitex puts a compliance-grade governance layer in front of every AI call — inspecting, enforcing, and logging before any privileged content reaches a model.
Capabilities
AI governance built for law firms and legal departments.
Attorney-Client Privilege Protection
Privileged communications between attorneys and clients are the foundation of legal practice. When lawyers use AI for research, drafting, or case analysis, prompts routinely contain privileged matter — case strategy, settlement positions, litigation risk assessments, and confidential client instructions. Disclosure of privileged content to a third-party AI provider can constitute waiver. Arbitex inspects every AI request from legal staff, detecting privilege indicators — case references, client matter numbers, settlement figures, litigation strategy language — and enforcing your firm's data handling policy before any content reaches a model endpoint.
Legal Hold & Litigation Support — Evidence Chain Audit
Firms under legal hold obligations must preserve all relevant communications and documents, including AI interactions that touch case matter. Arbitex's tamper-proof audit log provides a tamper-evident record of every AI interaction involving case data — who queried, what was sent, what the model returned, and what enforcement action was taken. Signed audit exports are admissible as business records. Legal hold tags on matter numbers ensure AI interactions for held matters are preserved and exportable on demand for discovery compliance.
Regulatory Filing Confidentiality — SEC, DOJ, FTC
Law firms preparing regulatory submissions — SEC filings, DOJ cooperation agreements, FTC consent decrees, merger notifications — handle material non-public information that is both legally privileged and market-sensitive. AI-assisted drafting of these filings creates data paths carrying MNPI, whistleblower identities, and enforcement strategy into AI endpoints. Arbitex detects regulatory filing indicators: SEC form references, EDGAR identifiers, DOJ case numbers, and enforcement-sensitive terminology. Policy enforcement blocks or redacts before any filing content reaches a model.
Client PII Protection — Case Files & Depositions
Legal matters generate dense PII: client addresses, Social Security numbers in estate filings, medical records in personal injury cases, financial statements in divorce proceedings, and witness identities in criminal defense. Attorneys querying AI with case file content expose client PII to third-party model providers. Arbitex's 3-tier DLP pipeline detects client PII across legal document patterns — deposition transcripts, pleading formats, discovery responses, and engagement letter structures — blocking or redacting before any client data reaches an AI endpoint.
Ethical Wall Enforcement — Conflict Isolation via Policy Engine
Law firms handling matters with conflicts of interest must maintain ethical walls (information barriers) between practice groups. When both sides of a transaction or dispute are represented within the same firm, AI tools cannot be allowed to surface information across the wall. Arbitex's policy engine enforces matter-level isolation: attorneys on one side of a wall cannot query AI with prompts that would surface case data from the other side. Routing policies restrict model access and DLP rules enforce data boundaries per matter assignment.
M&A Due Diligence — Deal Room IP Protection
Mergers and acquisitions generate concentrated IP exposure: target company financials, trade secrets, customer lists, proprietary technology documentation, and deal terms that are market-moving if disclosed. Attorneys and analysts using AI to review due diligence materials create data paths carrying deal-sensitive information into AI endpoints. Arbitex enforces deal-room-level data controls: matter-specific DLP policies detect deal identifiers, target company references, and valuation data. Time-bound access policies expire at deal close. Every AI interaction during due diligence is logged for post-close audit.
How it works
Deploy inside your firm network — privilege stays in your environment
The Arbitex data plane installs in your firm's network using Docker Compose or Kubernetes — inside your private cloud, on-premises data center, or law firm VPC. All AI traffic from attorneys, paralegals, and staff routes through the gateway before reaching any model endpoint. For government legal work requiring FedRAMP alignment, the Outpost deploys inside the authorized boundary. No privileged communications, client PII, or case data transits Arbitex infrastructure.
Privilege and PII detection runs in-path before any model processes it
Your configured compliance bundle activates the relevant control sets. Privilege indicators, client PII, regulatory filing content, and deal-room data are detected before reaching any AI model. Ethical wall policies enforce matter-level isolation. DLP enforcement actions — block, redact, or route-to-review — execute before any data reaches the model endpoint. Every decision is logged with a compliance framework identifier for firm governance reporting and bar ethics compliance documentation.
Audit evidence ready for bar ethics compliance and regulatory review
The tamper-proof audit log accumulates a complete evidence trail for every AI interaction involving privileged communications, client data, or regulatory filing content. Signed exports provide documentation for state bar ethics reviews, SEC examination, SOX compliance audits, and firm governance committees. Legal hold preservation ensures AI interaction records for held matters are retained and discoverable. SIEM integrations deliver enforcement metrics for continuous monitoring across practice groups.
Six frameworks. One policy layer.
Each compliance obligation maps to a specific Arbitex capability. All bundles are active simultaneously — no separate configuration per regulation, jurisdiction, or practice group.
Rule 1.6 duty of confidentiality and Rule 1.1 duty of competence applied to AI tool usage. DLP enforcement prevents disclosure of confidential client information to AI providers. Audit logs document competent supervision of AI-assisted legal work.
In-house legal teams at public companies handling SOX-regulated financial data, internal investigations, and whistleblower reports. DLP detection for material financial information. Audit trail for legal department AI usage during reporting periods.
Law firms handling EU data subjects in cross-border litigation, M&A, and regulatory matters. Data residency controls prevent EU personal data from reaching non-adequate jurisdiction AI endpoints. Data processing records for GDPR Article 30 compliance.
Firms handling SEC whistleblower matters must protect reporter identities. DLP detection for whistleblower identifiers, tip reference numbers, and reporter PII. Ethical wall enforcement isolates whistleblower matters from conflicted practice groups.
Government legal work — DOJ, DOD, and agency counsel — requires FedRAMP-aligned data handling. Hybrid Outpost deploys inside authorized boundaries. Air-gap deployment for classified litigation support and national security legal matters.
State bar associations are issuing ethics opinions on AI tool usage in legal practice. Arbitex provides the governance infrastructure to comply: supervision of AI outputs, confidentiality protection, competence documentation, and audit trails for bar ethics inquiries.
Related Resources
Ready to put governance in front of your legal AI?
Talk to an Arbitex engineer about attorney-client privilege protection, ethical wall enforcement, legal hold audit trails, M&A due diligence controls, and FedRAMP deployment for government legal work.