Question 1

What is the Kovel Doctrine?

Accepted Answer

United States v. Kovel, 296 F.2d 918 (2d Cir. 1961), addresses when communications with certain non-attorney agents working under an attorney's direction may be protected. Whether that doctrine applies to any particular AI or tooling use is fact-specific and not determined by this product. CounselConduit is infrastructure that law firms may use under their own supervision; it does not create privilege and is not a substitute for legal judgment.

Question 2

Is my client data stored anywhere?

Accepted Answer

CounselConduit is designed with retention controls intended to limit persistence of session content. Some operational metadata (for example billing timestamps and token counts) and security logs may be retained for limited periods. Universal zero-retention or zero-metadata is not claimed. Subpoenas and legal process can still apply to whatever records exist. See the Privacy Policy for current practices.

Question 3

What happened in United States v. Heppner?

Accepted Answer

United States v. Heppner, No. 1:25-cr-00503-JSR (S.D.N.Y., Rakoff, written opinion Feb 17 2026), held that about 31 AI documents and prompts a defendant created with consumer Claude were not privileged and not work product. The court named Anthropic and quoted the consumer privacy policy on inputs, outputs, training, and disclosure to third parties including regulators. Counsel conceded they did not direct the use. A sentence that counsel-directed AI might arguably function as a Kovel agent is dicta, not a holding. Heppner involved consumer Claude, used independently by the client under terms the court found inconsistent with confidentiality. CounselConduit is deliberately structured differently: attorney direction begins before use, the firm contracts directly for its enterprise cloud environment, and the system records the facts supporting that structure. CounselConduit does not create privilege. Courts decide on facts.

Question 4

How does billing work?

Accepted Answer

The buyer is the law firm. Solo, Small/Boutique, Midsize, and Big Law are yearly service fees. Service pricing only. CounselConduit subscription fees cover the software service, onboarding, configuration, support, policy controls, and audit/attestation tooling. Google Cloud and applicable Google Workspace usage are not included. Google bills the firm directly. CounselConduit does not resell or mark up Google usage. Paid access starts with a pilot booking; self-serve checkout is not live. Privilege is not sold as a product guarantee.

Question 5

What AI model does CounselConduit use?

Accepted Answer

CounselConduit routes model inference through firm-configured enterprise channels (for example Google Gemini via Vertex AI where enabled). Models are not a source of legal conclusions. Automated legal conclusions and automated court filing are not supported.

Question 6

Does this include Judge 6?

Accepted Answer

No. Judge 6 ships only inside UphillSnowball, sold by ShadowTagAI Inc. on shadowtagai.com. It is not a CounselConduit or HeadFade feature.

Question 7

Does CounselConduit support SOC 2 / HIPAA-aligned practices?

Accepted Answer

CounselConduit is pursuing SOC 2 Type II assessment work and designs architecture with regulated-industry customers in mind. No SOC 2 Type II report is published here. HIPAA applicability depends on the firm’s use case and agreements — no blanket HIPAA certification is claimed.

Management

Erik L. Hancock, JD