Data Security in LegalTech: What to Ask Before Adopting Any AI Tool

Most legaltech security conversations happen in the wrong order: pilot first, security review during procurement, and the awkward questions after case material has already been uploaded. This is the list to send before the pilot.

It is written to be forwarded. Send it to the vendor, ask for written answers, and treat the speed and specificity of the reply as data in itself — a vendor who has been asked before will answer in a day.

1. What happens to the content itself

• Is customer content used to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any model? State it as a contractual term, not a help-centre article.
• If the product calls a third-party model provider, what are that provider's retention and training terms, and under which tier is the account held?
• Is content ever reviewed by a human — for abuse monitoring, quality, or support — and under what controls?
• Is anything derived from our content (embeddings, indexes, caches) retained separately from the content, and for how long?

2. Encryption and key custody

• Encrypted in transit and at rest — with which algorithms?
• Who holds the encryption keys, and is key management operated separately from the storage layer? If the same party holds both, encryption at rest protects you against a stolen disk and not much else.
• Are keys rotated, and what is the process if a key is compromised?

3. Tenancy and access

• Is each customer's data logically or physically segregated?
• Which vendor staff can access customer content, under what authorisation, and is that access exceptional or routine?
• How is access to our workspace controlled on our side — roles, and whether a matter can be walled off from part of the team?

4. Location and sub-processors

• In which country or region is data stored and processed? Name the region, not the cloud provider.
• Give the full list of sub-processors that can touch customer content, and how we are notified when it changes.
• If personal data leaves the EEA, which Chapter V transfer mechanism applies?
• For Bahraini matters, does the destination appear on the Personal Data Protection Authority's adequacy list under Article 12, or is a specific authorisation in place?

5. Retention, deletion and exit

• How long is content retained by default, and is that configurable?
• When we delete a file, what is actually deleted, and how long does it persist in backups?
• On termination: can we export everything in a usable format, and how quickly is our data destroyed afterwards?
• Is a certificate of deletion available on request?

6. Incidents

• What is the contractual notification window for a personal data breach? The GDPR gives a controller 72 hours to notify a supervisory authority — a vendor who is not obliged to tell you promptly makes that deadline impossible.
• Who is notified, through which channel, and what information comes with the notice?
• Has there been a reportable incident in the last 24 months, and what changed afterwards?

7. Paper

• Is there a data processing agreement meeting Article 28 requirements, and can we see it before the pilot?
• Which independent assessments exist — and, more usefully, what was the scope? A certification covering a corporate network says nothing about the product.
• Does the contract permit us to disclose the arrangement to our client, and to a tribunal or regulator if asked?
• Does professional indemnity or cyber cover extend to this processing?

Reading the answers

Three response patterns are worth noticing. Deflection to a certification — a badge answers a different question than the one you asked. Answers that live only in a webpage — help-centre text can be edited; a contract cannot be edited unilaterally. Speed — a vendor selling to regulated buyers has answered this list many times and will send it back quickly.

One closing point: the answers determine which obligations you can actually meet. What those obligations are, across the GCC and the GDPR, is set out in why pasting case files into ChatGPT could violate client confidentiality.