AI is an enabler. Why handcuff it? Keep control of how AI reaches your data

The question most firms have not asked yet

AI has gone mainstream in UK firms in under two years: industry surveys found 61% of UK lawyers using it in September 2025, and 94% a year later. The same surveys show what worries them most: inaccurate answers, and confidential client data ending up where it should not.

Your software suppliers are now adding AI connectors, so that AI assistants can read your matters, documents and accounts. That is useful. But it raises a question most firms have not asked: who controls the route between AI and your client data? If each supplier runs its own AI on its own terms, the answer is that they do, one supplier at a time.

The alternative is a single route that the firm controls. Think of it as your own front desk: every AI request passes through it, under your rules, and is written in your own record. In technical terms it is often called an AI gateway, and it is built on an open standard (the Model Context Protocol, or MCP) that every major AI provider now supports.

Your data is your IP

Firms have made this decision before, about documents. Many chose a specialist document management system alongside their practice management system, so their documents would outlast any one supplier. The same thinking now applies to AI.

The regulator is clear that the responsibility stays with the firm:

• You remain accountable where work is carried out through others, including suppliers (SRA Code of Conduct for Firms, 2.3).
• The SRA's August 2026 warning notice on AI expects firms to be satisfied that client data stays in a secure environment, is not accessed by unauthorised third parties, is not used to train AI models without explicit authority, and is not kept longer than necessary. It warns that, depending on a provider's terms, firms may no longer have full control over how information is used.
• The Law Society advises firms to check AI suppliers' terms on reuse of data, and to plan how they would leave, including deletion of their data.

What your own route adds to client confidentiality

Owning the route does not move your data out of your practice management system. Your matters stay where they are, and a good supplier secures that platform well. What changes is who decides which AI sees your clients' data, under what rules, and who keeps the record.

	Each supplier's own AI	Your firm's own route
Which AI company sees client data	The one the supplier chose, on the supplier's contract	One you choose and contract with: UK or EU hosting, no training on your data, nothing retained
What the AI can see	Set by the supplier	Only what that person is already allowed to see; ethical walls still apply
Rules for particular clients	Usually one setting for everyone	Your rules by client or matter: "no AI on this client's work", "these matters are off limits"
The record of what the AI did	Held by each supplier, if kept; you have to ask	Your own record of who asked what and what was seen, ready for the SRA, the ICO or a client audit
If something goes wrong	You wait for each supplier's investigation	You can see it, switch AI off in one place and know what was exposed

This matters more each month. Many corporate clients' outside counsel guidelines now restrict how firms may use AI on their work: some ban it, others require approved tools or disclosure. A firm with its own route can enforce those rules client by client, and prove it.

There is a security reason too. AI can be tricked by instructions hidden in a document or email into revealing information, even when it only has the user's own access. The National Cyber Security Centre warns this may never be fully fixed, and advises firm limits on what AI systems can do. Those limits are far easier to set, and to check, in one place you control than across every supplier's product.

The access problem

Almost every supplier contract says the firm owns its data. The friction is in reaching it. These patterns all appear in suppliers' own published terms:

• exports limited to 100 documents at a time, with no way to export a whole matter;
• a ban on extracting data by automated means;
• fees, or a higher-priced plan, to connect other systems;
• a paid licence just to retrieve your data after you leave.

Each of these makes changing system harder. For AI they are decisive, because AI needs steady, automated access to the whole record. A supplier that controls that access controls what your AI can do. (See also Can you get your data out?)

Elsewhere, regulators have acted on this. After the Competition and Markets Authority's investigation into cloud computing, the largest providers changed their UK contracts so customers can move their data free of charge. Legal software has no such rules, so firms need these terms in their own contracts.

Be realistic

• It needs running properly. Your own route is only as secure as its set-up, sign-in and monitoring, whether you run it yourselves or with a specialist.
• It must not become another copy of your data. A well-designed route fetches what it needs for each request and keeps no stockpile of client data.
• Supplier AI is not automatically unsafe. Some suppliers do this well. The difference is that your own route lets you know, rather than take it on trust.
• Use suppliers' connectors where they are good. The best arrangement often plugs a supplier's connector into your own route: they maintain what they know best, you keep control.

Five questions to ask every supplier, in writing

1. Can we get all of our data out, documents included, without limits or fees?
2. Can our own systems connect to yours, as our people, with their permissions applied?
3. When your AI uses our data, which AI company processes it, where, and is anything kept or used for training?
4. Can we see a record of everything your AI has accessed?
5. Is connecting to our data included in our licence?

Get ahead

Soon every firm will have AI. The ones that win work will be those whose AI can draw on everything the firm knows, under the firm's own rules, with the record to show clients and the regulator. That does not come out of any one supplier's box. It comes from treating your data as the asset it is.

We help firms understand what their systems and contracts allow, negotiate the access and exit terms they need, and plan an approach to AI that keeps them in control, independently of any vendor.

Survey figures: industry surveys of UK legal professionals, September 2025 and September 2026. Supplier patterns are drawn from suppliers' own published terms and help pages, checked October 2026; we describe patterns, not suppliers. If you think anything here is out of date, please tell us and we will correct it.