Buying Process
What security and data-access review does a litigation platform require?
Updated July 2026
A deeper one than standard SaaS, because the platform holds privileged work product. Review five things: independent audit coverage, meaning current SOC 2 with security documentation available on request, segregation of your matter data, retention and deletion terms, confidentiality language that protects privilege, and access scoping for everyone who touches the file, including outside counsel. If the platform uses AI, add a grounding and traceability review on top.
Why is this review deeper than a standard SaaS security review?
Because of what the platform holds. A litigation platform carries attorney work product, status reports, deposition testimony, demand packages, and expert reports, material where a confidentiality failure is not just a breach but a potential privilege problem in live matters. Courts have split on when material shared with technology tools keeps its protection, and the contract with the vendor is a deciding factor. Review accordingly.
- Privileged work product: counsel's analysis and strategy, where disclosure risk is legal, not just reputational.
- The litigation record itself: depositions, demands, and expert reports on open, contested matters.
- Adversarial context: unlike most SaaS data, this material has opposing parties who would use it.
- Multi-party access: your team and your panel firms work in the same platform, so access scoping is part of security.
What belongs on the security review checklist?
Six items, each with a document or contract term behind it, never a verbal assurance. Independent audit coverage. Data segregation. Retention and deletion. Confidentiality that protects privilege. Access controls scoped to role and matter. And the security of the API connection if the platform will sync with your claims system. A vendor ready for this market produces the evidence without friction.
- Audit coverage: current SOC 2, with security documentation available on request rather than negotiated for.
- Data segregation: your matter data stays yours, never pooled with other customers or into shared benchmarks without consent.
- Retention and deletion: named terms for what happens to your data during and after the engagement.
- Privilege protection: confidentiality language binding the vendor, written to preserve work-product and privilege protection.
- Access controls: role-based and matter-scoped access for adjusters, litigation managers, and outside counsel.
- Connection security: how the API sync with your claims system is authenticated and what data it moves.
Ask for the documents in the first meeting, not the last. The speed and completeness of the response is itself diligence: a vendor that treats security documentation as routine has been through this review with buyers like you, and a vendor that stalls on it is telling you where you would rank as a customer.
What should the data-access review cover for outside counsel?
The full access map: who can see which matters, at what permission level, and how that changes when panels change. A litigation platform is shared with defense counsel by design, which is its value and its review burden. The questions are concrete: how firm access is scoped to the firm's own matters, how permissions are administered, and how access ends when a firm rolls off the panel.
| Ask the vendor | A good answer | A red flag |
|---|---|---|
| How is a firm's access scoped? | To its own matters, by role, administered centrally | Firms generally see the workspace |
| Who administers permissions? | Your admins, with an auditable record | Send us a ticket and we adjust it |
| What happens when a firm leaves the panel? | Access ends on a named trigger, verifiably | Accounts get cleaned up periodically |
| Can access be audited? | Yes, who saw what is reportable | We do not log at that level |
How does AI on the platform change the security review?
It adds a data-handling review on top of the infrastructure one. Ask what the AI reads, whether your matter data trains any model, whether outputs trace back to source documents, and whether the AI works only on your own case data. Grounded, narrow AI is reviewable: Case Clerk AI, for example, processes defense counsel status reports with every extracted fact traceable to the report it came from.
- Training: an explicit contractual bar on your matter data training the vendor's models or anyone else's.
- Retention: zero data retention for AI processing, consistent with the platform's overall deletion terms.
- Traceability: every AI output links to its source document, so the work can be verified rather than trusted.
- Scope: each AI feature does a named, narrow job on your own case data, never a borrowed benchmark.
One more screen worth running: ask what the AI does not do. CaseGlide's AI reads and structures the litigation record and does not predict verdicts or score outcome risk, because unverifiable inference cannot be audited. A vendor whose AI claims to predict outcomes is asking your security review to approve a black box.
Common questions
What audit evidence should we request from a litigation platform vendor?
Start with the independent audit: current SOC 2 coverage, with the security documentation available on request rather than under protest. That report gives your security team externally validated ground truth on the vendor's controls instead of a questionnaire the vendor graded itself. From there, request the specifics the audit does not settle for your use case: the data segregation model, retention and deletion terms, the access-control architecture for internal and outside-counsel users, and how the claims-system API connection is secured. Every answer should arrive as a document or a contract term. Verbal assurances do not survive vendor personnel changes, and they are not evidence your own auditors or clients can rely on later. A vendor that has sold into insurance and corporate legal departments will have this package ready, and the readiness itself tells you something.
How to pick the best litigation management system→Does the security review need to cover privilege specifically?
Yes, as its own item, because privilege does not follow automatically from good security. Courts have split on when material shared with technology tools keeps its protection, and the tier of tool and the contract with the vendor are deciding factors. That means your review should read the confidentiality language the way opposing counsel eventually might: is the vendor contractually bound to confidentiality, is your matter data barred from training any model, and is retention limited so privileged material does not persist past the engagement. Encryption and access controls protect against breach. The contract protects against the argument that sharing the material with the platform waived its protection. A litigation platform holds counsel's work product on live, contested matters, so get the privilege terms in the master agreement and have litigation counsel, not just procurement, read them.
Where courts stand on AI and privilege→Can the security review run in parallel with the product evaluation?
Yes, and it should, because the two workstreams need different people and neither blocks the other. The product evaluation runs on defense counsel work product from your own litigated book and answers whether the platform delivers. The security review runs on documents, the audit report, the segregation and retention terms, the access-control architecture, and answers whether the platform can be trusted with privileged material. Sequencing them serially just doubles the calendar. The one dependency to respect: do not move real matter data into any environment before the security review clears it, which is easily handled by scoping the early evaluation or clearing the review first for a pilot set. Run in parallel, the full diligence finishes in the time of the slower track instead of the sum of both.
Evaluating litigation software mid integration→How does CaseGlide handle this review?
By treating the review as the product working as designed. CaseGlide carries current SOC 2 audit coverage with security documentation available on request. Its AI is built to be reviewable rather than trusted: Case Clerk AI processes defense counsel status reports with every extracted fact traceable to the report it came from, Chronicle AI links every chronology entry to its source document, and Chambers AI answers only from your own case history, never a borrowed benchmark. No black boxes, no borrowed data, and no training on your matter data to argue about later. CaseGlide does not predict verdicts or score outcome risk, so there is no unverifiable inference for your security team to underwrite. The claims-system connection runs through APIs, reviewable like any other integration. Bring the checklist on this page to the review and ask for the evidence behind each line.
The CaseGlide platform→CaseGlide is the litigation intelligence platform for Fortune 500 legal departments and insurance claims organizations. It structures live litigation data from defense counsel into executive decisions: reducing defense spend, settling the right cases sooner, and shrinking litigated claim volume.
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