Court Rulings on Legal Privilege and AI Tools: Crowell Tracker

24-CV-12333

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division

2/10/2026

Discovery disputes stage after fact discovery had closed

• Whether materials created using AI are protected as work product.
• Whether employing ChatGPT waives work-product protection by revealing materials to a third party.

The court denied a motion to compel the production of documents related to ChatGPT usage:

1. The materials created were deemed the pro se plaintiff’s protected work product, as the court acknowledged that the defendant sought the plaintiff’s internal analysis and opinions, which enjoy heightened protection.
2. Disclosure of information does not constitute a waiver if it is not shared with an adversary. ChatGPT serves as a tool, and therefore, communicating with it does not risk making information publicly available, even if administrators exist “somewhere in the background.” Dkt. 94 at 12.

25-CR-00503

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York

2/17/2026
(following 2/10/2026 oral ruling)

Post-indictment; pre-trial stage (after a not-guilty plea)

• Can AI-generated documents be classified as attorney-client communications?
• Do AI-generated documents qualify for work-product protection?

Privilege. The documents were not considered privileged for three reasons:

1. The documents were not communications between Heppner and his legal counsel, as the Claude AI tool he used is not an attorney.
2. Communications with Claude did not maintain confidentiality since Claude explicitly relieves itself from confidentiality obligations, allowing shared content with third parties.
3. Heppner did not engage Claude to seek legal advice, and later sharing those documents with counsel does not confer attorney-client privilege.

Work Product in the Criminal Context. The documents lacked work-product protection as Heppner did not prepare them “at the behest of counsel,” and the AI-generated content did not reveal counsel’s legal strategy. Dkt. 27 at 12.

25-CV-01991

United States District Court for the District of Colorado

3/30/2026

Discovery stage

Rule 26(b)(3) work-product protection can extend to an pro se party’s AI-assisted litigation work:

1. The use of an AI tool alone does not automatically waive work-product protection solely based on third-party storage of the work product.
2. Interacting with an AI does not inherently compromise work-product protections, as it is improbable that such information will reach an adversary.

The work-product protection does not automatically cover the name of the AI tool used unless it is shown that revealing its identity would disclose the plaintiff’s legal strategy, in contrast to the outputs, which the court mandated the plaintiff to share.