The Law Society of Hong Kong issued a position paper in January 2024 on the impact of AI on the legal profession. Noting that substantial amounts of legal data are highly confidential and/or protected by legal professional privilege, the Law Society expressed concerns about client data privacy and securing sensitive information when using AI via cloud services. Lawyers have to find innovative ways of protecting data privacy, privilege and confidentiality.

There are no specific cases in Hong Kong that address how the law of privilege or professional secrecy protects inputs by lawyers into generative AI tools and the resulting outputs. Based on general principles, there is a risk that legal professional privilege may be lost when lawyers input legal advice into such tools, particularly where the information is improperly processed or disclosed (for example, where it is sent to the relevant cloud services provider). Lawyers may also breach their duty of confidentiality due to unauthorized disclosure of client information. To mitigate these risks, safeguards should be taken to protect client information. Lawyers should avoid inputting any confidential information into generative AI tools where the information may be improperly processed or disclosed, and they should clearly mark any AI-generated content intended for legal use as privileged.