If you are preparing for your own defense and don't have an attorney (you're acting pro se), your own LLM use would likely be protected under work product doctrine. The court would extend you some of the same protections an attorney would have, for the limited purposes of preparing your case.

This is a very narrow exemption, however.

(You would also want to make sure you're using a paid AI plan with contractually guaranteed privacy protections, otherwise it could be construed as third-party communications, which implicitly waives privilege.)

See: Warner v. Gilbarco, Inc.

> Does anyone know if there exists any OPSEC procedure for me to use third party tools like this for my own concerning legal questions that is both ethical and allows me to be confident that my interactions won't land in discovery documents?

Isn't that a fundamental misunderstanding? Would "OPSEC" like that amount to destruction of evidence or contempt of court or something like that?

Like if all your incriminating documents are on some encrypted drive, it's not like that defeats discovery. You're supposed to decrypt them and hand them over.

> if I do it to help me prepare my defense, then the exact same queries would be subject to subpoena/discovery

We need a law where someone can clearly designate a chat privileged, with severe consequences for mis-use.

Wouldn't that same logic exclude evidence from Google searches, like "how to get away with murder"?

>For (1) it's so wild to me that if I pay a lawyer, they can run the same queries on these tools and they are protected by attorney-client privilege, but if I do it to help me prepare my defense, then the exact same queries would be subject to subpoena/discovery.

How's this any different than any professional license? You're basically paying for preferential treatment from the state in a given subject area.

Self host your own LLM