THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL 60 | AUGUST 2026 Law Practice Tips By Julie Bays Your Client Is Already Using AI. Now What? LAWYERS HAVE SPENT the last few years discussing how artificial intelligence can be used in the practice of law. That discussion is important, but it is no longer the only AI issue in the attorney-client relationship. Clients are also using AI. They are using it before they call a lawyer, after they hire a lawyer and sometimes while litigation is pending. They may use AI to understand a demand letter, summarize a contract, draft a statement, evaluate a claim, prepare for a meeting or decide whether they think their lawyer is doing a good job. This behavior is understandable. Legal problems are stressful. Clients want immediate answers. AI tools are available, easy to use and often presented as conversational helpers. But when clients use public or consumer AI tools for legal problems, they may create risks they do not understand. They may disclose confidential facts. They may input privileged communications into a third-party platform. They may create prompts and outputs that become relevant in discovery. They may rely on inaccurate legal analysis. Or they may create a written record that complicates the lawyer’s ability to advise them later. For lawyers, the practical question is not whether clients should ever use AI. They will. The practical question is how lawyers should manage client AI use in a way that protects confidentiality, preserves privilege where possible, maintains competent representation and improves the quality of legal services. A recent federal case, United States v. Heppner, illustrates why this issue needs attention. In that case, a criminal defendant used Claude, Anthropic’s generative AI chatbot, and later claimed that the resulting AI materials were protected by attorney-client privilege and the work-product doctrine. The court rejected those claims. The court reasoned that Claude was not an attorney, that the communications were not confidential in light of the platform’s privacy terms and potential third-party disclosures, and that the materials were not prepared at the direction of counsel or reflective of counsel’s strategy.1 The lesson from Heppner should not be overstated. It does not mean every AI-related prompt or output is automatically discoverable, and other courts have reached more protective work-product results in different circumstances.2 But Heppner does offer an important warning: When clients independently use public AI tools about their legal problems, lawyers may later have to deal with privilege, confidentiality and discovery consequences that could have been reduced with better client instructions at the beginning of the representation. The better approach is practical and preventive. Lawyers should do three things: Ask clients about AI use, instruct clients on safe boundaries, and preserve AI-related materials when litigation is pending or reasonably anticipated. ASK ABOUT AI USE AT INTAKE Lawyers routinely ask new clients whether they have signed documents, spoken with opposing parties, received letters, posted on social media or saved relevant text messages. AI use should now be added to that intake conversation. This does not need to be complicated. Lawyers can simply ask, “Have you used ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity or any other AI tool to research, summarize, draft or analyze anything related to this matter?” If the answer is yes, the lawyer should ask what tool was used, what information was entered, whether any documents were uploaded, whether any communications with counsel were copied into the tool and whether the client still has access to the chat history, prompts, outputs or uploaded files.
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