Claude for Legal
27 points by Einenlum 2 hours ago | 18 comments

droidjj 16 minutes ago
As a lawyer, I'm excited about this, but there are two roadblocks that I'm not sure how Anthropic will navigate:

(1) For non-lawyers who use these skills/connectors/whatchamacallits to try to get legal advice, their communications are not protected by attorney-client privilege. This will absolutely bite some people in the ass.

(2) If a lawyer uses this with confidential client information (which, to the uninitiated, doesn't just mean SSNs and bank account numbers, but "all information relating to the representation of a client") and forgets to toggle off "Help improve Claude" in their settings, they have possibly (maybe even likely) committed malpractice.[1]

[1] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/p...

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bryant 11 minutes ago
Citation for #1 - https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2026/03/united-states-v-he...

> Judge Rakoff of the Southern District of New York — addressing “a question of first impression nationwide” — ruled that written exchanges between a criminal defendant and generative AI platform Claude were not protected by attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine.

Much more to it than this one-liner that I pulled out, but safe to say, don't rely on or put your legal defense etc. (or elements of it) into AI unless you want it discovered.

(not a lawyer, unlike OP, who might be able to refine what I highlighted with more precision)

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nerdsniper 2 minutes ago
For (1) it's so wild to me that if I pay a lawyer, they can run the same queries on these tools and they are protected by attorney-client privilege, but if I do it to help me prepare my defense, then the exact same queries would be subject to subpoena/discovery.
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SkyPuncher 10 minutes ago
For #2, I’d expect you’d use this through an organization/business account that has data retention turned off by default.
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unstyledcontent 13 minutes ago
Just remember that your AI chat history is not protected like attorney client privilege and can be used as evidence against you in court. If you talk to a lawyer and they use AI, those chats are privileged.
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awongh 4 minutes ago
How does this compare to the other legal tech ai startup products?

Harvey is valued at $11b

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Shank 23 minutes ago
It seems like they ripped out Lexis, which is probably one of the most important tools for lawyers: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-for-legal/pull/5.
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pawelkomarnicki 16 minutes ago
It will be hilarious to see this one play out because ChatGPT and Perplexity already do wonders for small-claim issues like tenancy laws, various personal letters, etc.
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gosub100 46 seconds ago
I would love this for poor people to fight giant corporations via 'lawfare'. It's 100% unethical (just like many corporations) but just knowing how to file junk lawsuits that cost corporations millions to fight would be nice.

I dont mean 'frivolous' like prisoners who file pro-se about their ice cream melting [1], but a level or two above that , that costs time and money to produce records and testimony to defend, even if nary a dime is paid out. It's asymmetric warfare that benefits the little guy, instead of the "mandatory arbitration" and similar rules that always benefit corporations.

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vb-8448 26 minutes ago
I guess at some point we will have lawyers, attorneys and judges using this stuff ... at the point lawyers will become kinda "seo"/"copywriter" experts on how to better trick the others LLM.
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forshaper 17 minutes ago
Almost makes me want to get a law degree.
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OkWing99 13 minutes ago
Anthropics New Playbook:

`/loop 2days /create-new-{insert-industry}-md-files`

This is only for PR. No one checks what's in those docs, or if these are real, valid or ethical. The goal here is for all news outlets to pick them up. You're not the audience.

Given the amount of free PR they can get from some AI-generated .md files, I'd probably do the same if I was on their boat.

Right now, I don't think any other AI company generates as much as slop as Anthropic does.

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personjerry 5 minutes ago
RIP Harvey
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__loam 3 minutes ago
Harvey was always an upstart in the legal tech industry. There's other companies that have a much better understanding of the market and compliance issues but you don't hear about them because nobody wants to talk about legal tech.
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arbirk 11 minutes ago
Would use it if it wasn't supporting the space wanker
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ares623 18 minutes ago
Does anyone find it weird that Anthropic's Github org is `anthropics` (with an 's') and the `anthropic` username is owned by some random dude in Australia? Imagine the shenanigans someone can achieve with that user.
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dsr_ 8 minutes ago
One would think that they could spontaneously offer him a hundred million dollars for it and solve the problem.

I half-suspect they threatened him and he stuck to his guns.

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dawie 13 minutes ago
It made me double check if it was a fake repo.
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