Secure AI Intake Chatbot for a Legal Services Firm Handling Sensitive Client Data

Overview

Built a secure AI intake chatbot for a legal services firm that needed to qualify and gather initial case details from prospective clients without exposing sensitive information to third-party AI tools not vetted for confidentiality. The chatbot runs on infrastructure the firm controls, with conversation data encrypted and access strictly limited to authorized staff, and it's scoped to gather only the intake information needed to route a case to the right attorney. This addressed a genuine tension the firm faced: wanting the responsiveness of an AI intake tool without the confidentiality risk of sending prospective client details through a general-purpose consumer AI service. Every conversation is logged for the firm's own records but never used to train any external, shared model. A legal services firm wanted the responsiveness of an AI intake tool but couldn't risk sending prospective client details through a general-purpose consumer AI service not vetted for confidentiality. We built a secure AI intake chatbot running on infrastructure the firm controls, with conversation data encrypted and access strictly limited to authorized staff, scoped to gather only the intake information needed to route a case to the right attorney. We worked with the firm's own confidentiality requirements as the primary design constraint, choosing infrastructure the firm could fully control before considering any feature beyond that. The chatbot was tested extensively for data-handling correctness before being made available to prospective clients. The firm now offers instant, always-available intake without compromising the client confidentiality obligations central to their legal practice — resolving a real tension between responsiveness and confidentiality.