Recent case on attorney‐client privilege has parallels for FERPA, disability law

A recent Federal Court case sent shockwaves through the legal community when it decided that materials generated by artificial intelligence were not protected by attorney‐client privilege. A federal grand jury indicted the defendant on multiple fraud‐related charges arising from a financial services company he founded and controlled. Before his arrest, the defendant ran queries about the government's investigation through Claude, a generative AI tool created by Anthropic. The government seized 31 AI‐generated documents reflecting the defendant's prompts to Claude and the tool's responses. The defendant allegedly included information he learned from his attorneys in his inputs for the AI documents. Defense counsel claimed these materials were protected by attorney‐client privilege and should not be accessed by the government.