How to Secure AI Agents for Legal Work

AI agents in legal practice access privileged communications, review confidential documents, and draft filings that carry legal consequences — a single unauthorized disclosure can waive attorney-client privilege and expose the firm to malpractice liability. SafeClaw by Authensor enforces deny-by-default policies on every action your legal AI agent attempts, ensuring confidential documents are accessible only within matter boundaries, privileged communications are never exfiltrated, and every access is logged in a hash-chained audit trail. Policy evaluation completes in sub-milliseconds, keeping legal research workflows fast.

Quick Start

npx @authensor/safeclaw

Creates a .safeclaw/ directory with deny-all defaults. Your legal agent cannot access any document, database, or external service until you define explicit allow rules scoped to specific matters.

Confidentiality Enforcement

Legal AI agents must respect matter boundaries — an agent working on Matter A should never access documents from Matter B:

# .safeclaw/policies/legal-agent.yaml
rules:
  - id: allow-current-matter-docs
    action: file.read
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "matters/${CURRENT_MATTER_ID}/**"
    reason: "Agent can only read documents in the assigned matter"

- id: block-other-matter-docs
    action: file.read
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "matters/**"
    reason: "Access to other matter documents is blocked"

- id: block-privilege-log-access
    action: file.read
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "*/privilegelog"
    reason: "Privilege logs contain sensitive categorizations"

Document Access Control

Gate access based on document classification and sensitivity:

rules:
  - id: allow-public-filings
    action: file.read
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "matters/${CURRENT_MATTER_ID}/filings/public/**"
    reason: "Public filings are readable"

- id: block-sealed-documents
    action: file.read
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "/sealed/"
    reason: "Sealed documents require court authorization"

- id: allow-draft-writes
    action: file.write
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "matters/${CURRENT_MATTER_ID}/drafts/*/.{docx,md,txt}"
    reason: "Agent can write drafts within the current matter"

- id: block-filed-document-edits
    action: file.write
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "matters//filed/"
    reason: "Filed documents are immutable"

Privilege Protection

Prevent the agent from actions that could waive attorney-client privilege:

rules:
  - id: block-external-transmission
    action: network.request
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      destination:
        not_pattern: "{.lawfirm.internal,.westlaw.com,*.lexisnexis.com}"
    reason: "Privileged content cannot be transmitted externally"

- id: block-email-privileged
    action: api.call
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      endpoint:
        pattern: "/send-email"
    reason: "Agent cannot send emails — privilege waiver risk"

- id: block-third-party-ai
    action: api.call
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      endpoint:
        pattern: "{api.openai.com,anthropic.com,google.com/ai}"
    reason: "Privileged content must not be sent to external AI services"

Legal Research Gating

Allow controlled access to legal research databases while preventing data exfiltration:

rules:
  - id: allow-westlaw-search
    action: api.call
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      endpoint:
        pattern: ".westlaw.com/search"
      method: "GET"
    reason: "Agent can search Westlaw for case law"

- id: allow-lexis-search
    action: api.call
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      endpoint:
        pattern: ".lexisnexis.com/api/search"
      method: "GET"
    reason: "Agent can search LexisNexis"

- id: deny-all-apis
    action: api.call
    effect: deny
    reason: "Default deny for all other API calls"

Why SafeClaw

• 446 tests covering policy evaluation correctness across complex access patterns
• Deny-by-default — zero document access until explicitly scoped to a specific matter
• Sub-millisecond evaluation — no latency added to legal research workflows
• Hash-chained audit trail — tamper-proof record of every document access for ethics compliance
• Works with Claude AND OpenAI — same confidentiality policies regardless of LLM backend

Cross-References

• Legal Agent Document Safety
• How to Control Agent Permissions
• Per-Agent Isolation Pattern
• Immutable Audit Log Pattern