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your firm to use AI.

Ask questions across your entire work product — including scanned PDFs your DMS can't search. Automated filing, chronologies, client portals. You own the platform, the code — and everything it learns.

Your firm's legal tools team, on the firm's own data — not another per-seat product.

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The question whether AI-generated communications fall within the scope of attorney-client privilege is now squarely before the federal courts. In United States v. Heppner, No. 25-cr-00503-JSR (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 17, 2026), Judge Rakoff held that written exchanges between a criminal defendant and Anthropic’s Claude were protected by neither the attorney-client privilege nor the work product doctrine. The court reasoned that the platform’s terms of service — which reserve the right to disclose user data to “government regulatory authorities” — negated any expectation of confidentiality.

Applying the traditional framework from the Second Circuit, the court required that privileged communications be: “(1) among only privileged parties, (2) made for the purpose of obtaining legal advice.” The court emphasized that because an AI chatbot is neither an attorney nor an agent of an attorney, the first prong could not be met.

sourcing... source — Mejia, 2d Cir. ✓ Source — Westlaw United States v. Mejia, 655 F.3d 126, 132 (2d Cir. 2011)

Under California Evidence Code § 952(a), a “confidential communication” must be transmitted “by a means which, so far as the client is aware, discloses the information to no third persons.” Where an AI platform’s terms permit data collection or third-party disclosure, any communication routed through it may constitute a waiver of privilege under § 954.

sourcing... source — Cal. Evid. Code ✓ Source → Cal. Evid. Code § 952(a) drafting analysis...

Reading these authorities together, the dispositive question for any firm deploying AI drafting tools is whether client data routed through the platform satisfies both Mejia’s two-prong privilege test and the “no third persons” standard under § 952(a). Where the platform’s terms reserve a right to disclose, the communication is likely unprivileged — exposing the firm to involuntary waiver.

AI Draft
Generated from 2 sources Mejia, 655 F.3d at 132 — privilege framework Cal. Evid. Code § 952(a) — confidential communication
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The legal AI market is moving. Most of it is moving in the wrong direction.

Clients increasingly expect their outside counsel to use AI — yet fewer than 20% mandate it in guidelines or RFPs so far, per Thomson Reuters' 2026 professional-services study. That gap is the window: the RFP questions are coming — which tools, how they're governed, what protects client data — and the firms that show up with a real answer before it's a requirement are winning the work. But the market's leading options — Harvey at $2,400/seat/month with a 20-seat minimum, Legora at $30K/year with 10 — are priced for AmLaw 100 economics and built for five practice areas. For a firm of 50, 100, 200 attorneys handling a dozen areas of law, the seat math only gets worse as you grow: at scale, seat-priced legal AI lands around $1,200 a seat a month — approaching $1.4M a year at 100 attorneys. Every year. For software the firm will never own.

And there's a quieter cost: with an off-the-shelf product, the learning accumulates inside software you don't own — the corrections, the classifications, the patterns of your practice. Switch vendors and your data comes back, but the learning stays behind. Like it or not, this is the moment for custom: Slingr builds what they can't sell you — a platform sized for your firm, covering your practice areas, that you own outright — code, data, prompts, and the learning itself.

The firm's knowledge is buried where nobody can use it

Filing Is Manual Tagging

Every document filed by hand: find the client-matter with boolean search, drag it in, hand-code the fields. Attorneys reuse stale policy versions because nobody can tell which one is current — "has anyone done a personal-device policy recently?" shouldn't be an unanswerable question.

Scanned PDFs Are Invisible

In most DMSs, a scanned PDF is invisible to search — and client files arrive scanned. Add terabytes of depositions, exhibits, and archives sitting in shared drives, partially duplicated, and the firm's most valuable asset — its work product — can't be searched, let alone asked a question.

The Learning Leaves With the Vendor

DMS seats, storage tiers, practice tools — the subscriptions renew every year, and all the while the learning builds up inside products your firm will never own. Leave, and your data comes back but the learning stays behind. You're renting the place your own knowledge lives, and the rent keeps rising.

Where it leads

From document silos to an intelligent firm core.

The same evolution, tuned for the practice of law: merge matters, documents, and email into one governed pool the firm owns, stand up the custom platform that runs the firm, build the roster of agents — and retire the DMS license behind them.

AI AGENTDocument Q&A
AI AGENTAuto-Filing & Classification
AI AGENTChronology Builder
AI AGENTClient Updates & Portal
CUSTOM PLATFORMpurpose-built software that runs the business — owned by you
ONE DATA POOLmerged · governed · owned by you
Legacy DMSSILOED
Shared drivesSILOED
Scanned archivesUNSEARCHABLE
Email & spreadsheetsMANUAL

The firm runs on a legacy DMS, terabytes of shared drives, scanned archives no search can see, and email. The knowledge is trapped — and every license renews.

First, matters, documents, and email merge into one governed pool the firm owns — deduplicated, OCR’d, every scanned page finally readable. Not a sync — a migration.

On that pool we stand up a custom platform — matter-centric, permission-trimmed, with the access controls and audit trail client confidentiality demands.

A roster of AI agents does the work — answers drawn from the firm's own documents, auto-filing, chronologies — with attorneys in the loop. The legacy DMS is retired; the work product stays yours.

A platform built on your matters — not another legal SaaS seat

This isn't a generic playbook. We build bespoke document-intelligence and case-management platforms for firms — starting with how your attorneys, paralegals, and operations team actually work, then building the platform around it. Every firm is different, but the shape is the same: everything from the document management system to case management, replaced by a platform you own, for an ongoing run rate instead of a stack of per-seat licenses. Your firm names it, your firm owns it.

Q&A Over Your Entire Corpus

Ask the firm's entire body of work a question and get an answer drawn from your own documents — including scanned PDFs that were invisible in your DMS. Permission-trimmed retrieval means attorneys only see what they're allowed to see.

Automated Ingestion & Filing

Drag a document in and the platform classifies it, codes the fields, and files it to the right client-matter — no manual tagging. A quick human confirm in the early days; the classifier learns from every correction.

Matter-Centric Platform with Real Access Controls

Browse, filing, versioning, and latest-version document control organized the way firms think — by client and matter. Matter- and client-level permissions, audit trail, and SSO on your identity provider, built for confidential material across competing clients.

Workflow Agents & Client Portal

Chronologies drawn from case documents instead of paralegal hours. Monthly client updates drafted from the month's activity, approved by the managing attorney. Deposition-prep outlines, first-draft discovery responses from your templates, and a firm-branded client portal.

When your clients ask what your firm is doing with AI — and they will — you have an answer and a branded portal to show them. Not a vendor's demo. Your platform, your name on it.

Proof, not promises

Princeton Brain & Spine runs high-stakes medical-legal cases on a platform we built: case preparation time reduced by 60%, inter-disciplinary coordination improved 75%.

Read the case study →
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Built for the metrics that matter.

Pilot-First
Before any bulk migration, one bounded slice — your policies and a live matter — goes end-to-end: drag-and-drop filing and corpus Q&A, with a clear go/no-go checkpoint before the full corpus is committed.
Dual-Track
Your DMS stays live and dual-tracked during the build — no risk to active matters. It's sunset only when the platform is proven, timed to your renewal. Migration in waves, never a big bang.
Owned
The firm owns its work outright — the source code and data we build for you. We host and fully manage it, with no lock-in — it stays yours and portable. The license spend you carry today becomes an asset you own.

AI accelerates every phase.

1

Inventory the Corpus

We inventory every source — DMS, shared drives, archives — measuring counts, document types, duplication, the scanned-page share, and your license renewal timing. Every budgetary number gets trued up against the real corpus, not a guess.

2

Design the Platform

Architecture and specs modeled on how the firm works: the matter-centric data model, client- and matter-level access controls, permission-trimmed retrieval, SSO, and the sync contracts that keep your DMS dual-tracked during the build.

3

Pilot, Then Go/No-Go

Our pods ship in two-week cycles toward a bounded pilot: one document slice plus a live matter, end-to-end — automated filing and corpus Q&A your attorneys actually use. Measured actuals true up the full-corpus plan before bulk migration is committed.

4

Migrate in Waves, Then Sunset

The corpus migrates in waves with reconciliation and an access-control audit at each step. When the platform is proven, the DMS is retired on your renewal timing — and the roadmap continues: chronologies, client portal, drafting agents.

More than 90% of lawyers already use AI in their daily work, per Wolters Kluwer's 2026 survey. Your clients assume your firm does too — the firms with a real answer are winning the work.

Ready to own the platform your firm runs on?

Book a 20-minute strategy call. We'll size your corpus, map the pilot slice, and show you what Q&A over your own work product looks like — and what the DMS license spend becomes when it's an asset instead.

Book a strategy call

The next page is a live calendar — pick a slot and you're booked. Or start in writing instead.

Not ready for a call? Get a written pilot plan.

Describe your setup — the DMS you're on, roughly how many matters and documents, what's scanned, what hurts. Our AI drafts a budgetary pilot plan — approach, scope, and the right pod — reviewed by an architect before it reaches you. Same-day follow-up, no sales call.