From my perspective, Chinese walls are one of those concepts that every solicitor knows exists in principle and few firms can demonstrate structurally. In the paper-file era, Chinese walls lived in the filing cabinet and the matter inception process. In the Ai era, they need to live in the software — or they don’t live at all.
What a per-matter vault is
A per-matter vault is an encrypted storage area dedicated to a specific client engagement. When you create Matter 2036-A4, a new vault is created; all documents, correspondence, Ai interactions related to that matter go into it. Matter 2036-B7 has its own vault. The two vaults don’t know about each other.
When the Ai works on Matter 2036-A4, it can only retrieve from Matter A4’s vault. The software enforces this at the retrieval layer — the Ai literally doesn’t have permission to query other vaults during that session. Specially, this isn’t a prompt instruction (“please only use Matter A4 data”); it’s a technical boundary the Ai cannot cross.
Why this matters structurally
Prompt-based isolation is defeatable. If the Ai is smart enough, it can reason around instructions; if the user is determined, they can craft prompts that coax the Ai to ignore the isolation. Retrieval-layer isolation is not defeatable by prompting. The Ai cannot retrieve what the software doesn’t expose.
For SRA-regulated firms, this is the difference between Chinese walls in a policy document (which the SRA has long treated as weaker) and Chinese walls in the architecture (which genuinely close the risk). Apart from this, for litigation firms handling matters that are formally adverse, the architectural guarantee is what lets the firm work on both sides without raising professional conduct issues — provided the fee-earners are properly separated, the Ai layer maintains the separation automatically.
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