Legal professional privilege entitles parties to legal proceedings to object to disclosing communications. The form of legal professional privilege that is now commonly known as ‘legal advice privilege’ attaches to communications between a client and its lawyers in connection with the provision of legal advice. The provision of legal advice increasingly involves the use of technology across a wide spectrum of activities with varying degrees of human interaction or supervision. Use of technology ranges from a lawyer conducting a keyword search of a legal database to legal advice given online by fully automated systems. With technology becoming more integrated into legal practice, an important issue that has not been explored is whether legal advice privilege attaches to communications between client and legal services provider regardless of the degree of human involvement and even if the ‘lawyer’ might constitute a fully automated advice algorithm. In essence, our central research question is: If a robot gives legal advice, is that advice privileged? This article makes an original and distinctive contribution to discourse in this area through offering novel perspectives on and solutions to a question which has not previously been investigated by legal academics.

中文翻译：

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法律咨询特权和人工智能：机器人可以提供特权法律咨询吗？

法律专业特权赋予法律诉讼各方反对披露通信的权利。现在通常称为“法律咨询特权”的法律专业特权形式附加于客户与其律师之间就提供法律咨询进行的沟通。法律咨询的提供越来越多地涉及在具有不同程度的人际互动或监督的广泛活动中使用技术。技术的使用范围从律师对法律数据库进行关键字搜索到由全自动系统在线提供的法律建议。随着技术越来越多地融入法律实践，一个尚未探讨的重要问题是，无论人为参与程度如何，即使“律师”可能构成完全自动化的建议算法，法律建议特权是否会附加到客户与法律服务提供者之间的通信中。本质上，我们的核心研究问题是：如果机器人提供法律建议，该建议是否享有特权？本文通过对一个以前未被法律学者研究过的问题提供新颖的观点和解决方案，对这一领域的话语做出了独创性和独特的贡献。这个建议有特权吗？本文通过对一个以前未被法律学者研究过的问题提供新颖的观点和解决方案，对这一领域的话语做出了独创性和独特的贡献。这个建议有特权吗？本文通过对一个以前未被法律学者研究过的问题提供新颖的观点和解决方案，对这一领域的话语做出了独创性和独特的贡献。