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As artificial intelligence reshapes the legal industry, law firms face growing challenges around data security, client confidentiality, and regulatory compliance.
At the recent ConnectLive conference at The Star, Sydney, iManage Asia-Pacific legal industry expert Madeleine Porter talked to Lawyers Weekly about the risks associated with agentic AI, shadow AI and the responsible usage of emerging technologies.
Porter discussed how law firms can maintain professional obligations while embracing innovation and how iManage’s approach to bringing AI to governed documents can help protect sensitive information and support secure AI adoption.
This comes after a recent episode of LawTech Talks, in which Porter discussed how AI is transforming legal knowledge management by helping firms organise and leverage institutional knowledge, while increasing the need for data security, controlled access, and auditable AI workflows.
AI governance and compliance risks
With the enhancement of technology increasingly integrated into legal operations, Porter explored strategies for law practices to mitigate security exposure, safeguard sensitive client data, and uphold ethical duties.
“With the introduction of agentic AI, you’ve got agents running tasks that humans are also running, usually concurrently, but obviously the agents lack that business judgement,” Porter said.
“Making sure that all of the security that you have in place within your document management system is respected when you’re using other systems.
“If you’ve got a matter that’s behind an information barrier that’s restricted, you could have something that’s locked down because it’s price sensitive.
“Then if you want to leverage an AI platform, moving those documents could really disrupt that information barrier, which then could put you in breach of many different rules and regulations.”
Porter warned that without proper governance, AI can create detrimental consequences for firms, from breaches of confidentiality to failures in professional and regulatory compliance.
“It has lots of potentially catastrophic ramifications if something [were] to go awry,” Porter said.
“I think particularly young lawyers are so proficient with using AI tools in their personal life, if they’re going into a firm or an organisation, they really need to respect the organisation’s internal policies and guidelines, because what might be acceptable in their personal use is definitely not acceptable in a professional sense, particularly if they’re the custodians of their clients’ information.
“The duty of confidentiality and the overriding obligation to the court are unwavering, and they’re quite strict in terms of what you can and cannot do.”
Responsible AI adoption and iManage’s approach
Beyond managing risks for clients, Porter explained how iManage helps firms implement AI while maintaining control over private information and existing security measures.
“The main thing that iManage does that’s different to other AI vendors is that because we are the custodians and the single source of truth, that system of record for our customers, we bring AI to the documents,” Porter said.
iManage seeks to minimise the hazards linked to transferring sensitive documents across different platforms by ensuring AI operations remain within a firm’s established, governed infrastructure.
“By bringing AI to your documents rather than taking them outside of that safe and secure and governed platform, [it] means that you can safely use AI,” Porter said.
“You would [know] that everything is auditable, reportable, there is that sort of transparency and traceability.
“It means that the governed content, that footprint remains quite static rather than sort of having that duplication and increasing that exposure area within the platform.
“We’re doing it within the platform and bringing AI to the platform as well.”
