Complaint response letters and AI data leakage: what a conveyancer’s apology gives away in ChatGPT or Claude.

A complaint is the moment a practice most wants the wording to be right, so the draft goes into ChatGPT or Claude to make it warmer and clearer. The letter holds the client’s grievance in their own words, the name of the staff member who made the mistake, the money the practice will refund and what it is changing inside. This page marks every item in a routine response to a client complaint about a misdirected email and a fee that bears on NSW record keeping, the regulator and the Privacy Act, and shows how the same letter is drafted on Ermos inside the practice.

The complaint response

Sent after a client complains in writing, setting out what happened, what the practice has done about it and where the client can go if they are still unhappy.

Brindle Lane Conveyancing Pty Ltd
(02) 5550 0143

Monday 2 November 2026

Joel and Mira Kessler¹
Unit 3/55 Kingsley Road, Marrickville NSW 2204

Your complaint of 21 October 2026: Unit 9/28 Lyrebird Parade, Dulwich Hill, matter 26-0418⁸

Dear Joel and Mira,

Thank you for your email of 21 October. I am sorry for the worry we caused you, and I have looked into what happened.

What happened. On 15 October our clerk sent a copy of the contract review report to Joel’s work address at Hallam Freight. You told us on 14 October to use his personal address, and our file still listed the work address from your first enquiry. The report was in his inbox for about four hours before we recalled it.²

Your concern. You are worried that Hallam’s IT staff could have read a report that sets out your finances and Mira’s parental leave from March, before Mira has told her own manager.⁵

The person involved. Callum Banh made the error. He has been spoken to, he accepts what happened and he has completed our refresher on sending client documents. I take responsibility as the licensee.³

What we are doing. We now check the recipient against the signed intake form before any document with finance details goes out, and anything that mentions a client’s health or family goes only to an address the client has confirmed by phone.⁶

Fees. You also queried the search charges. A title search was ordered twice on 5 October, so we will credit $42.50 plus a courtesy credit of $110.00, a total of $152.50, on your final statement. Our fee of $1,650.00 including GST is unchanged.⁴

If you are not satisfied with this response you can contact NSW Fair Trading, which regulates licensed conveyancers.⁷

Yours sincerely,
Rosalind Teague, Licensed Conveyancer, Brindle Lane Conveyancing Pty Ltd⁹

An invented letter about an invented complaint. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the practice

The complainants

Two named clients and their home address. Personal information, and the people the letter is about. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Transmitted to the provider, generally offshore on personal plans
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The incident

Which document went where, when and for how long. A record of a possible disclosure of personal information. Whether the Privacy Act binds the practice depends on the small business exemption and on its AML/CTF handling. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A disclosure incident transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The staff member

A named employee, what he did wrong and how he was dealt with. Employment information about a third party that the clients do not need to see in this form and that would not normally leave the practice.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A named employee and how he was dealt with transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The refund and the fee

The amounts credited and the fee that stays unchanged. Commercial information about the practice, with a calculation that a person has to check.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The refund and fee transmitted
Ermos Edge	The AI can mis-sum a credit; the conveyancer must check each figure
Ermos Dominion	The AI can mis-sum a credit; the conveyancer must check each figure

The clients’ worry

What they fear their employer might learn, including a family plan Mira has not told her manager. Personal and employment information shared in confidence. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A confided worry about an employer transmitted; on consumer tiers it can train future models
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The practice’s new controls

The checks the practice now makes before sending documents, including what it does with health and family details. An internal security procedure that is not for outsiders.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The practice’s security procedure transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

7
The regulator referral line
Where a client can go if still dissatisfied. NSW Fair Trading administers the licensing scheme for conveyancers, and the sentence is generic wording any practice uses.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Generic wording about a public regulator; sending it exposes nothing
Ermos Edge	Not about where data goes
Ermos Dominion	Not about where data goes

The matter and the property

Ties the complaint to a live transaction. NSW guidance requires a separate file for each transaction, kept for at least seven years, and the complaint belongs with it.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A live matter and its address transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The licensee

A named licensed conveyancer who accepts responsibility. The NSW licence register is public, so the name is not secret, but the signed acceptance of responsibility is the practice’s own.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The licensee is on a public register; the acceptance of responsibility is for a person to write
Ermos Edge	Not about where data goes; accepting responsibility is the licensee’s own act
Ermos Dominion	Not about where data goes; accepting responsibility is the licensee’s own act

What happens in Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)

The whole document is transmitted to the provider’s servers. On personal plans the user cannot choose where it is stored or processed, and for the major providers that has generally meant outside Australia, under that country’s legal process. Some business plans offer storage in Australia, but the provider still receives the content.
On consumer tiers, prompts can be retained and used to train future models.
The provider’s staff and systems can reach the content under the provider’s own policies.
Once sent, the practice no longer controls it. Retention and deletion happen on the provider’s terms.

The same document on Ermos

Ermos Dominion

The document is drafted on a unit in your office, from your own templates and the matter file. Every marked item stays on the unit, which keeps working with the internet switched off. Nothing in it is transmitted to an AI provider, so there is no disclosure to analyse: the confidentiality work is the same as for your file server.

Ermos Edge

Your documents, the index and your access boundaries stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre. When a staff member asks for this draft, only their question and the excerpts they are permitted to see go to a named Australian provider, who is contractually barred from keeping the content or training any model on it. Nothing is processed outside Australia.

	Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Ermos Edge	Ermos Dominion
Where the document is processed	Provider servers, generally offshore on personal plans	Your instance in an Australian data centre; answers generated in Australia	The unit in your office
Who can read it	Provider staff and systems, under policy	Your staff, within the boundaries you set. The named Australian provider processes only permitted excerpts, under contract, and keeps nothing	Your staff only
Is it kept	On the provider’s terms	Kept on your instance; the provider is barred from retaining it	Stays on the unit
Can it train a model	On consumer tiers, yes	No, by contract	Only your own unit learns from it, on your hardware

Part of AI data leakage in conveyancing practices.

Common questions

Do ChatGPT and Claude use the information in a complaint response?

Yes, a pasted letter is sent to the AI company's servers and processed there to produce a reply. As at October 2026, whether a conversation on a personal plan (ChatGPT Free, Plus or Pro; Claude Free, Pro or Max) can be used to train the models depends on a setting each user controls. Business plans (ChatGPT Business and Enterprise, Claude Team and Enterprise) and the developer APIs sit under commercial terms, and OpenAI and Anthropic each say they do not train on that content by default (OpenAI, Anthropic). On either product, the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons can send a whole conversation back for training. A complaint response holds the clients' home address, the staff member who made the mistake, the refund and a worry about what an employer might learn.

Is it safe to paste a complaint response into ChatGPT or Claude?

No, because the letter records an incident, a named employee and a private worry. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recommends in its guidance on commercially available AI products that organisations do not enter personal information, and particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools, because of the significant and complex privacy risks. How a staff member was dealt with is employment information about a third party. The clients' fear about their employer was shared in confidence. Whether the Privacy Act binds the practice depends on the small business exemption and on its AML/CTF handling.

Can ChatGPT or Claude be trusted to draft a complaint response?

Not without a qualified person checking it, because language models can produce fluent text with details that are not in the file, wrong figures, wrong dates or references that look real but are not. A qualified person should check every item against the file. In this letter the refund of $152.50, the dates of the misdirected email and the practice's new controls would do most harm if wrong.

How can a conveyancing practice use AI for a complaint response without sending it to ChatGPT or Claude?

Ermos is built so the document stays under your control. On the Dominion AI unit it is drafted inside your office and none of it is sent to an AI provider. On Ermos Edge your documents and index stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre, and only the question and the excerpts the user is permitted to see go to a named Australian provider that is contractually barred from keeping them or training any model on them. The response is drafted from the client's complaint, the matter file and the practice's own complaint response template. The licensed conveyancer checks every statement and the refund before signing it.

Who regulates licensed conveyancers in NSW?

NSW Fair Trading administers the licensing scheme under the Conveyancers Licensing Act 2003. Its pages cover trust account approvals and audits, which are lodged with it each year by 30 September. A client who is still dissatisfied after a practice's own response can contact it.

How long must complaint records be kept?

NSW Government guidance says records for each transaction must be kept in a separate file and kept safely by the licensee for at least seven years, unless lawfully transferred to another licensee or a legal practitioner. A complaint about a matter belongs with that matter, so a copy pasted elsewhere sits outside the file.

Can a refund come out of client trust money?

NSW guidance says funds held on behalf of a person cannot be used for any other purpose, and that trust money must be paid or disbursed as the client directs. A practice that refunds a fee or credits a charge should check that the payment bears on the right ledger and does not draw on another client's money.

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