AI for law firms
Professional privilege does not distinguish between an email and a chat window. The duty is the same.
Updated
Why law firms use Acotia
A law firm works under professional secrecy: contracts, filings, names of parties. AI helps review and draft, but every request to a third-party model is information leaving. Acotia decides what leaves, logs it and can send the most delicate material to an EU-hosted model.
The firm's own terms
Clients, matter references or internal expressions, as text or regular expressions, are masked like any other data. Personal names are not reliably detected by pattern, which is why they are added here.
Delicate work to an EU model
Anything coming from the sensitive folder can always go to an EU-hosted model, while the rest uses whichever model each lawyer prefers.
A log for due diligence
Who used which model, when and which categories appeared, without storing the text. Exportable as CSV.
0
texts stored on the server
100%
of requests logged, without content
EU
Mistral models hosted in the EU, on your company's account
The tasks we bring under control first
Contract review
Look for risks or unusual clauses with the parties' names masked.
Draft filings
A first version of a filing with matter references turned into labels.
Legal research
General questions on doctrine or legislation, with no client data and the cost in view.
Client communication
Emails and status summaries with client data handled according to the firm's policy.
Review clause 7 of the contract between Ribera and Lumen, matter 2026/118.
Review clause 7 of the contract between [TERM_1] and [TERM_2], matter [TERM_3].
The concrete risk
A draft claim naming the parties, a contract clause identifying the counterparty, a summary of facts from a case file. Material covered by the duty of secrecy that, pasted into an unauthorised tool, leaves the firm with no record of anything.
It is not about banning
Banning AI in a law firm does not work: it gets used anyway, just off the radar. What works is for the firm to provide the tool, decide what may leave and in what form, and hold the record of what happened. That is where the professional duty becomes demonstrable.
What stays documented
For every query: what was sent, with which substitutions, to which model and by whom. If one day you have to explain how a client's information was handled, the answer is a report rather than a reconstruction from memory.
What each firm decides
Which materials may go through AI and which may not, with what substitutions, to which models and by whom. A perimeter lets the firm write that decision as a policy and have it apply to the whole team, instead of relying on a memo that each person reads their own way.
Official sources
General Statute of the Spanish Legal Profession, Royal Decree 135/2021, which governs professional secrecy: consolidated text in the BOE.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Regulation (EU) 2016/679: official text on EUR-Lex.
Frequently asked questions
Can a lawyer use AI without breaching professional secrecy?
It is a professional-ethics decision for the firm, not for a tool. What a tool can do is help it be respected: replace identifiers before leaving, send the most delicate material to models hosted in the EU and keep a record. Always check with your bar association or adviser.
What about documents with the parties' names?
Today, pattern-based detection does not reliably recognise personal names; for that you use custom terms, such as the client's name or the case reference. It is one of the limitations we state plainly.
Is there a record of what was consulted?
There is a record of who, when, with which model, which data categories appeared and which action was applied. The content of the query is not recorded.