Confidentiality cuts the other way

Here is what the hand-wringing pieces get backwards. Confidentiality is not the reason to avoid understanding these tools. It’s the reason you must. A lawyer who understands how a language model handles information is far better positioned to protect client confidences than one who does not. They know what gets transmitted, what gets retained, what gets logged and where inference actually runs.

They can read a vendor’s data-handling terms and know which questions to ask. They can configure a tool so that client documents never leave a controlled environment. They can spot the difference between real security architecture and a badge on a website. The lawyer who “protects confidentiality” by refusing to learn cannot do any of that. Their protection is a memo.

The other’s is control. Under Rule 1. 6 and our duty of technological competence, control is what the obligation actually demands.