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. KovelAI 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

KovelAI 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 In re Heppner?

Accepted Answer

Public marketing references post-Heppner discovery risk for client internet activity outside attorney-supervised channels. Case outcomes and their scope are jurisdiction- and fact-specific. KovelAI does not guarantee any particular court result. Firms remain responsible for ethics compliance and privilege analysis.

Question 4

How does billing work for firm-supervised sessions?

Accepted Answer

Clients may access KovelAI through a firm's branded portal when the firm enables it. Session activity can support billable entries configured by the firm. Pricing and engagement terms are between the firm and its clients. Privilege is not sold as a product guarantee.

Question 5

What AI model does KovelAI use?

Accepted Answer

KovelAI 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 KovelAI support SOC 2 / HIPAA-aligned practices?

Accepted Answer

KovelAI 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.

The Privilege-Preserving Architecture

Retention Controls

SOC 2

E2E Encryption

Epistemic Airgap Doctrine

Immutable Audit Ledger