Ethical walls that AI cannot climb.
Lawyers owe clients confidentiality, and firms build ethical walls to manage conflicts. An AI assistant indexed across the document management system ignores both. Data.co Control enforces matter-level walls and privilege labels on every retrieval and tool call.
Confidentiality is a duty, not a setting.
Professional conduct rules require lawyers to make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized disclosure of client information, and many bar opinions on generative AI ask firms to understand where client data goes and who can see it. Conflicts screens and ethical walls add another layer: some lawyers must not see some matters at all.
Data.co keeps client documents inside the firm's environment and maps matter staffing from your systems into policy. A screened lawyer's assistant cannot retrieve documents from the walled matter, and attempts are logged for the general counsel's office. Documents labeled privileged can be kept away from any external model endpoint entirely.
What firms build on it.
Matter Q&A
Ask questions across a matter's pleadings, correspondence, and productions, with answers cited to document and page.
Privilege review assist
Suggest privilege calls and draft log entries for reviewer confirmation. The final call stays with a lawyer.
Precedent search
Search prior work product across the firm, filtered by walls and by client restrictions on reuse.
Legal research
Research agents read public statutes, regulations, and case law from licensed datasets, with no access to client files.
Outside counsel guidelines
Check draft invoices against each client's billing guidelines before they are sent.
How a conflicts screen becomes policy.
| Conflicts system says | Data.co enforces |
|---|---|
| Lawyer X is screened from Matter 1042 | Deny all retrieval and tool calls on matter:1042 for X and agents acting for X |
| Matter 1042 is staffed by Group A | Allow read and search on matter:1042 for Group A |
| Client prohibits use of its work product elsewhere | Exclude client documents from firm-wide precedent search |
| Document is marked privileged | Restrict to local model endpoints; deny export |
A screen applies to the lawyer and the lawyer's agents.
Delegated requests are evaluated twice, as the agent and as the user it acts for, and the stricter result wins. A screened lawyer cannot route around a wall by asking an assistant. Illustrative policies; your conflicts team defines the groups.
id: pol_legal_wall_1042
description: Screened timekeepers cannot reach matter 1042
subject: { groups: [screened-matter-1042] }
resource: { collection: "dms.matter_1042" }
action: "*"
effect: deny
explain: "Ethical wall: you are screened from this matter. Contact the general counsel's office."Illustrative example · final API surface documented in /docs
A sequence general counsel can sign off on.
- 1
Research first
Deploy a research agent limited to public legal datasets. No client data is involved, so the risk review is short.
- 2
Sync conflicts data
Import matter staffing and screens from your conflicts and time systems, and confirm the resulting groups match the systems of record.
- 3
One practice group
Open matter Q&A for a single practice group, with privilege labels applied at ingest and export denied.
- 4
Firm-wide precedent
Enable precedent search last, after client reuse restrictions have been captured as exclusion rules.
Research data from the Data.co Marketplace.
Statutes, regulations, and court opinions are available through the Data.co Marketplace via API, MCP server, or download, starting with datasets from LAW.co, an affiliated legal data platform. Each dataset carries its own license terms.
Questions buyers ask
Does client data ever leave the firm?
Not through Data.co. Models, indexes, and audit logs run inside the firm's environment. Policies can restrict privileged and client-confidential material to local endpoints only.
How do walls stay in sync with our conflicts system?
Matter staffing and screens are imported from your systems of record on a schedule or by event, and become group memberships that policies reference. Changes are logged.
Can the research agent see client documents?
Only if a policy allows it. A common pattern is a research agent limited to public legal datasets, with a separate matter assistant for client files.
Is the output legal advice?
No. AI output is a draft for a lawyer's review. Data.co's role is to control what the model can read and to record what it did.
Does this work for in-house legal departments?
Yes. The same matter and privilege controls apply, often combined with walls between legal and the business teams that are parties to a matter.
What happens when someone is added to a screen mid-matter?
The next sync updates the group, and the deny applies to the following request. Earlier access remains in the audit log, which helps the general counsel's office document when the screen took effect.
Can clients audit how their documents were used?
Audit records can be filtered by client and matter tags and exported. Records show identities, actions, and decisions rather than document content, so they can be shared without disclosing other clients' information.
See it against your own use case.
A 30-minute technical walkthrough, policy simulation on your scenarios, and a deployment recommendation for on-prem, private cloud, or hybrid.