Access
A law firm's files open without login on a legal AI platform
In October 2025 an independent researcher found that on the legal AI platform Filevine, full access to one law firm's document store could be obtained without logging in. A search for “confidential” returned nearly 100,000 results.
Filevine is a case and document management platform for law firms that also uses artificial intelligence; the company is valued at more than a billion dollars. Firms entrust it with large amounts of confidential material. In October 2025 an independent security researcher set out to see how well it protects that material, without a customer account, using only what was visible from outside.
The researcher found a Filevine subdomain belonging to a law firm and, in the website's code, the address of a programming interface (API). A simple request to it was answered without logging in. The answer contained an access key: a fully privileged administrator key to the firm's Box cloud storage, in other words its entire document store, together with logs and user information. A search for the word “confidential” returned nearly 100,000 results, and at that point the researcher stopped testing.
In the researcher's assessment, the key would have allowed every one of the firm's files to be downloaded, potentially including health data, internal memos, payroll records and documents protected by court orders. The researcher reported the flaw to Filevine on 27 October, and on 21 November the company confirmed it had been fixed. According to Filevine, only this one law firm was affected and no other client; it was a non-production instance, and not a platform-wide issue.
What can we learn from it?
An AI document tool often holds not only its own data but also access keys to other services, such as cloud storage or email; if such a key leaks, everything becomes reachable at once. Such tools can take a lot of work off our hands, provided their access is in proportion to the task. In Confiella the model has no access to email, files or the web: it only receives the request the user has reviewed and approved. Before connecting an AI tool to your files, ask exactly what it can access, and narrow it to what the task needs.
Sources
- alexschapiro.com: How I Reverse Engineered a Billion-Dollar Legal AI Tool and Found 100k+ Confidential Files
- GIGAZINE: It was discovered that a vulnerability in a legal assistance AI tool allowed outsiders to access nearly 100,000 confidential files
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