Are my conversations with Wigmore AI privileged?
Short answer: your conversations with Wigmore happen inside an attorney-client relationship with a law firm, which is a fundamentally different confidentiality posture than a consumer chatbot — but no one can guarantee how a court will rule on privilege in any particular case.
The problem with consumer chatbots
In February 2026, a federal judge in New York (United States v. Heppner) held that a litigant's conversations with a consumer AI chatbot were protected by neither attorney-client privilege nor the work-product doctrine. The court's reasoning was straightforward: a chatbot is not a lawyer, so no attorney-client relationship existed; the product's own privacy policy said inputs could be collected, used for training, and shared with third parties, which undercut any expectation of confidentiality; and the chats were not prepared at an attorney's direction, so work-product protection did not apply. The other side got the chats.
A few months later, a Texas court reached a friendlier result, holding that a litigant's chatbot conversations prepared in anticipation of litigation can qualify as work product under Texas rules — but even then, the litigant still had to disclose which AI tool was used and what materials were fed into it. Courts are split, and the law is actively developing.
How Cloud Counsel is structured differently
- You sign with a law firm. Access to Cloud Counsel begins with a platform access agreement with J. Madison PLC. Your case file and your conversations with Wigmore happen inside that attorney-client relationship — not under a consumer product's privacy policy.
- AI providers act as confidential agents of the firm. The AI services that power Wigmore process your data as confidential agents of the firm for privilege-non-waiver purposes, under confidentiality obligations — the same way law firms have long engaged interpreters, investigators, and litigation-support vendors.
- Your case file is treated as confidential attorney-client material. Everything in it, including AI-generated analysis, is handled under the firm's professional duty of confidentiality.
What no one can promise
No law firm can guarantee a privilege or work-product outcome. These protections always depend on the jurisdiction, the judge, and the specific facts of your matter, and courts are currently split on how the doctrines apply to AI. Cloud Counsel's confidentiality framework applies to covered matters within the firm's practice areas and jurisdictions. What we can say is that a case file built inside an attorney-client platform starts from a defensible confidentiality posture, while a consumer chat log starts from a privacy policy written to protect the software company.
A practical rule of thumb: if you wouldn't say it to the other side's lawyer, don't type it into a consumer chatbot. If you have questions about protecting your own communications, ask your attorney about your specific situation.