A free 15-minute Zoom call. No cost, no pressure.First, name what is actually sensitive
Before you pick a tool, get clear on what leaves the office. A professional office usually has three buckets.
- Public: your website copy, service descriptions, general questions.
- Internal: meeting notes, staff schedules, your own procedures.
- Client: names, matter details, patient notes, tax documents, account numbers.
Bucket one and two are easy. Almost any AI tool handles them fine. Bucket three is where the worry lives, and it is where you need to make a real decision instead of a vague one.
Write the buckets down. It makes every conversation after that much shorter. It also gives you something to hand a new staff member on day one.
Option one: zero data retention
Zero data retention means the AI provider does not keep your prompts or files after it answers. You send a question with a client document attached, you get an answer back, and the provider's copy is gone.
That is different from "not used for training." Plenty of tools say your data is not used for training, which is good, but they still store the conversation. Zero data retention goes further and removes the stored copy.
This is the right fit for offices that want to keep using a familiar tool like Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini but need a stricter setting underneath it. It is set up on your own account, so you still pay the AI company directly and you keep control.
One caution: zero data retention usually means you cannot scroll back through old chats the same way. Your team needs to know that and save what matters into your own files.
Option two: private AI on a machine in your office
If the rule is simple, files never leave the building, this is the answer. We put a machine in your office running a private AI model. Your team uses it through a browser on your own network. Client files go in, answers come out, and nothing travels to an outside company.
This suits law offices, medical practices and finance firms with strict internal rules, and anyone whose clients ask pointed questions about where their information goes.
Be realistic about the tradeoffs. A private model is not identical to the big public ones. It is very good at drafting, summarizing, sorting and answering questions about your own documents. For the hardest reasoning tasks, some offices run both: private AI for client files, a public tool with zero data retention for everything else.
It also needs a home. A small machine, a shelf, power, and someone to keep it updated. That is part of what we set up and support.
What to connect, and in what order
Do not connect everything on day one. Start where the work actually piles up.
- Shared files first. Your document folders are where the client material already lives. Connect those and AI can find and summarize what your team needs.
- Email second. Drafting replies and catching up on a thread is usually an early win.
- Your practice or case management tool last. It is the most tangled, so leave it until the team is comfortable.
Set up one person at a time on their own login. Shared logins cause confusion about who asked what and make it hard to remove someone later.
Write the rules down before anyone starts
A short written policy heads off a lot of problems. One page is enough. Cover these:
- Which bucket of files goes into which tool.
- What never goes in, if anything.
- That staff use the company account, not their personal one.
- Who to ask when they are unsure.
- What to do when the AI gives a wrong answer.
That last one matters. AI will get things wrong. The rule should be simple: AI drafts, a person checks anything that goes to a client. Nobody sends an AI answer straight out on a matter they have not read.
Also tell your clients what you are doing. A line in your engagement letter or a note on the website settles it before anyone asks.
What a normal week looks like after setup
Monday morning, someone drops a stack of documents into the shared folder and asks the AI to summarize each one. A paralegal drafts three client update letters from those summaries and edits them. An office manager clears a backlog of email. Someone asks a question about a clause and gets a plain English explanation before checking it against the source.
On the private setup, all of that happens without a file leaving the building. On the zero data retention setup, it happens in the cloud with the stored copy removed.
What does not change: a person still reviews the work. AI moves the first draft along so your team spends its time on judgment instead of typing.
And when something breaks, a login fails, or a staff member asks whether AI can handle a new task, you have a real person to text. That is the support level, and it is the difference between AI that sticks and AI that gets abandoned.
Check your own rules, then decide
We do not tell you what your profession requires. You and your compliance advisor know that best. What we do is lay out the options in plain terms, including zero data retention and private AI in your office, so you can make a call you are comfortable defending.
Every client starts with Setup. From there you can move up to Support, Coaching or Done for you, or step down, whenever it suits you. You keep your own AI account either way.
Start with the free AI game plan. It is a free 15-minute Zoom call, no cost, no pressure. We look at your office, show where AI helps first and say which option fits. Nothing is set up on that call. If you want to move ahead, you get your price in writing before anything starts.