Contract review reports and AI data leakage: what a conveyancer’s report gives away in ChatGPT or Claude.

A contract review report is the first advice a conveyancer gives, and the one most tempting to hand to ChatGPT or Claude, because the contract and the strata report run to dozens of pages and the summary is the slow part. The report also holds the buyers’ names, their finance position, the price, the vendor’s circumstances and the practice’s own advice on what to change. This page marks every item in a routine report on a NSW strata unit that bears on the rules for licensed conveyancers, the AML/CTF reforms and the Privacy Act, and shows how the same report is prepared on Ermos inside the practice.

The contract review report

Prepared after the contract is received and before exchange. The conveyancer reads the contract, the strata report and the title search, then tells the buyers what to change, what to ask and what to accept. This one is for a strata unit in NSW.

Contract review report
Prepared for Joel and Mira Kessler¹ by Rosalind Teague, Licensed Conveyancer, Brindle Lane Conveyancing Pty Ltd⁹ · 30 September 2026

The property. Unit 9, 28 Lyrebird Parade, Dulwich Hill (Lot 9, Strata Plan 61234). Price $1,085,000, deposit $108,500, vendor Dennis Marlowe, agent Fernhill Property Group. Settlement 42 days after exchange.²

Finance. The contract is not subject to finance. Westpac’s pre-approval of $868,000 expires on 15 December and was assessed on Joel’s salary of $141,000 and Mira’s part-time income, before her parental leave from March 2027. If the valuation comes in low you must still complete, with up to $217,000 of your own funds.³

Strata. The strata report shows a special levy of $2,300 per lot for roof membrane works, raised on 14 September and due on 15 December, a sinking fund balance of $186,400 and quarterly levies of $1,184.00 and $412.00. The minutes record water ingress in the car park in 2025.⁴

Your household. By-law 14 requires owners corporation consent to keep a dog. We recommend you apply for Biscuit before exchange.⁵

The vendor and the title. Mr Marlowe is the sole registered proprietor following the death of his wife, Ruth, in March. His solicitor, Ines Hartnell, says he is moving to Bendigo to be near his daughter and wants a quick, clean settlement. The CBA mortgage will be discharged at settlement.⁶

What we recommend. Delete the vendor’s right in special condition 6 to extend settlement by 14 days. Ask for the compliance certificate for the 2022 bathroom renovation, which is missing from the pack. Ask for the special levy as a credit at settlement. If the vendor refuses the levy credit we would still recommend proceeding, because the building is otherwise sound.⁷

Our fee. $1,650 including GST, plus estimated disbursements of $1,120.⁸

An invented contract review report for an invented practice and clients. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the practice

The clients

Two named buyers. Personal information, and the key that ties everything below to real people. Keeping client information confidential is listed among the rules of conduct in Schedule 2 of the Conveyancers Licensing Regulation, according to the NSW Government’s page for conveyancers. 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 property, price, parties and settlement period

A live transaction with an address, a price, the vendor, the agent and a date range. Scamwatch describes payment redirection scams as emails that impersonate a business to ask that an upcoming payment go to another account, and a transaction’s parties and timing are what such an email is built from.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A live transaction and its timing 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 finance position

Salary, a loan limit, an expiry date, the gap the buyers would have to fund and a note about parental leave. Financial information is personal information, though not sensitive information, and it shows how much cash the buyers hold and when they are under pressure. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The buyers’ finance limits transmitted; on consumer tiers they can train future models
Ermos Edge	Leaves inside a permitted excerpt only when the question needs the figures
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The strata findings

The levy figures, the special levy and a water ingress note from the minutes. The work product the buyers are paying for, and information about one building that its other owners and buyers would be interested in.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Building facts also sit in the strata pack, but the analysis is yours and the answer depends on plan or setting
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

A household detail

The buyers’ dog by name, tied to a by-law and an address. A small personal detail, but it tells a reader something about the household that no one asked the buyers to publish. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A household detail 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 vendor’s circumstances

A bereavement, a move interstate and a named daughter, all about a living third party who is not the practice’s client. Personal information about someone who never agreed to it being shared, and nothing in the advice needs the daughter or the death. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A third party’s bereavement transmitted without his knowledge
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 advice and the amendments

Which clauses to delete, what to ask for and where the practice would give way. This is the practice’s negotiating position in a live contract, and a client confidence.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The negotiating position transmitted before the vendor sees it
Ermos Edge	The AI can still draft a poor amendment; the conveyancer must check every recommendation
Ermos Dominion	The AI can still draft a poor amendment; the conveyancer must check every recommendation

The fee

What the clients pay and the practice’s disbursement estimate. Commercial information about the practice and the client.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The practice’s fee 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 and the practice

Ties the report to a named licensed conveyancer and a company. NSW publishes a register of licensed conveyancers, so the name is not secret, but it identifies who gave the advice.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The licensee is on a public register, so sending the name exposes little
Ermos Edge	Not about where data goes; the licensee remains responsible for the advice
Ermos Dominion	Not about where data goes; the licensee remains responsible for the advice

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 contract review report?

Yes, everything pasted from the report 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. This report carries the buyers' finance position, a special levy of $2,300 per lot and the practice's advice on which clauses to delete.

Is it safe to paste a contract review report into ChatGPT or Claude if we take the names out?

No, because the report still points to one household and one sale without the names. Removing names rarely makes a document anonymous. Information stays personal information while the person is reasonably identifiable, and the OAIC warns that information can be at risk of re-identification even when it has been de-identified or anonymised. A strata unit at a named address, a pre-approval that expires on 15 December and a vendor who is recently widowed and moving to Bendigo fit a single transaction. 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.

Does a ChatGPT Business or Claude Team plan make it safe for a contract review report?

Not on its own. A business plan changes the default on training, but it does not change who receives the content. On a personal plan the user cannot choose where conversations are stored or processed. Some business plans let an organisation choose to store data at rest in Australia (OpenAI), which still leaves the content with the AI company. The OAIC's guidance also tells organisations to review carefully the terms and settings that will apply to their use of any AI product. The report would still reach the AI company with the buyers' finance position, the practice's negotiating position and the vendor's circumstances in it. Our comparisons with ChatGPT Enterprise and Claude weigh the trade-offs.

How can a conveyancing practice use AI for a contract review report 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 report is drafted from the matter file and the practice's own contract review template. The licensed conveyancer checks every clause, figure and date against the contract before it goes to the buyers.

Can a conveyancer use AI to review a contract?

AI can summarise a contract and list issues, but the conveyancer stays responsible for the advice. Where the review runs decides who receives the contract, the price and the parties. Keeping client information confidential is listed among the rules of conduct in Schedule 2 of the NSW Conveyancers Licensing Regulation. On an Ermos unit the review runs in the office, from the practice's own templates.

How long must a NSW conveyancer keep a contract file?

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 contract pasted into an AI tool creates a copy outside that file, on someone else's terms.

Does the Privacy Act apply to a small conveyancing practice?

A small business with turnover of $3 million or less is generally exempt from the Privacy Act. The OAIC says the Act still applies to personal information handled for AML/CTF obligations, even in a small business, and those obligations began for conveyancers on 1 July 2026. A practice should check its own turnover and position.

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