Will instruction sheets and AI confidentiality: what the plans for her children give away in ChatGPT or Claude.

A will instruction sheet is the most personal form a law firm completes. It records who the client trusts with her children, what she owns, what she is afraid of and who she wants kept out, usually in her own words, taken down in an hour. Staff paste it into ChatGPT or Claude to turn the notes into drafting instructions or a first draft of the will. This page marks every item in an instruction sheet that rule 9 and the Privacy Act bear on, and shows how the same sheet is turned into a draft on Ermos inside the firm.

The will instruction sheet

Completed by the solicitor in the first meeting with a client who wants a will, and used to draft the will and later to defend it if it is challenged.

Will instruction sheet
Matter SOTO-0421 · interview 30 October 2026, 10.30am, in person · H. Reid⁹

Client	Marguerite Elena Soto, 12 Bayview Terrace, Coogee NSW 2034, born 17 May 1986¹
Children	Isla Lindahl, born 3 February 2018. Theo Lindahl, born 19 August 2020.²
Capacity note	Client reports an anxiety disorder treated with medication and fortnightly psychology (GP: Dr Anand, Coogee Family Practice). No memory or cognitive concerns. Understood the nature and extent of her estate and the people with a claim on it.⁴
Guardian and executor	Camila Soto (sister) as executor and as guardian of both children. Substitute: Rhiannon Vo (friend). Client does not want Camila shown the draft until it is final.³
Assets	Home at 12 Bayview Terrace, owned solely, valued about $2,100,000, mortgage about $640,000. Superannuation about $412,000 with death cover of $1,100,000. Client is unsure whether a death benefit nomination is in place; to check with the fund.⁵
Structure	Everything to a trust for the children until each is 25, trustee Camila. Mr Lindahl is not to be a trustee or appointor or to receive any benefit. Parenting proceedings are on foot (file SYC 2026/01184). Solicitor to advise separately on what a will can and cannot do about the children’s care.⁶
Other	Client expects possible compensation from her claim against Greystone and wants any money recovered held in the same trust.⁷
Fees	Will and testamentary trust, estimated $1,650 plus GST. Costs disclosure given at interview.⁸

An invented form. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the firm

The client, her address and her date of birth

Enough to identify her and to open accounts in her name. Personal information, and confidential to the client under rule 9. Rule 9 confidentiality 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

Two children and their dates of birth

Two named minors with dates of birth, and the reason the will exists. Personal information about children. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Two children’s names and dates of birth 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

Guardian and executor choices

Two named people the client trusts with her children and her estate, in order of preference, and her wish to keep one of them out of the drafting. Their personal information and the client’s most private planning. Rule 9 confidentiality guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Two third parties named and the client’s secret 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

Health and the capacity note

A diagnosis, medication and a treating doctor, recorded so the will can be defended if its validity is later questioned. Health information is sensitive information under the Privacy Act, which applies to a law practice only if the practice is covered, for example through turnover above $3 million. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Sensitive health information transmitted
Ermos Edge	Leaves only if the excerpt is inside the question, to a named Australian provider that keeps nothing
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

Assets, debts and superannuation

A home, a mortgage, super and cover, with values. A map of what the estate holds, useful to a fraudster and to a relative who expects more. Rule 9 confidentiality guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A map of the estate on a third party’s servers
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 children’s father, excluded, and a court file number

A named person the client wants kept out of the trust, tied to a family court file. Plans the other parent has not been told about, in a document that sits beside live proceedings. Part XIVB of the Family Law Act, covered on the family law affidavit page, is why identifying people in those proceedings is handled with care. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A family court file and a parent’s exclusion 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

A claim that has not been decided

That the client expects to recover from her employer and wants the money held for her children. It links two matters, and tells a reader she expects to recover. Part of the client’s privileged instructions. Legal privilege guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Privileged instructions linking two matters 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

8
The fee estimate
The firm’s price for the work, sent with the client’s name.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Low value alone, but sent with the client’s name
Ermos Edge	Low value alone; the route changes little
Ermos Dominion	Low value alone; the route changes little

The solicitor

Ties the sheet to a practitioner bound by rule 9. Law Society AI guidance.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Transmitted, and the leak is traceable to you
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

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 firm 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 law firms.

Common questions

Do ChatGPT and Claude use the information in a will instruction sheet?

Yes, whatever is pasted from the sheet 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 sheet holds two children's names and birth dates, a capacity note with a diagnosis and medication, and the client's wish to keep the children's father out of the trust.

Can we use ChatGPT or Claude for a will instruction sheet if we remove the names?

No, because the circumstances on the sheet still point to one client. 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. Two children born in 2018 and 2020, an anxiety disorder under treatment, a family court file number and a claim she expects to recover on fit only one person. 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. Health information is also sensitive information under the Privacy Act, which applies to a law practice only if the practice is covered.

Can ChatGPT or Claude remember the details in a will instruction sheet later?

They can. Both products also have memory features that can carry details from one conversation into later ones, and on a personal account each user decides whether they are switched on (ChatGPT, Claude). A solicitor who pastes one client's sheet and later asks for help with a different will could find those details follow into the new chat. The guardian choices, the children's birth dates and the wish to keep a sister from seeing the draft belong to this client and to no other matter.

How can a law firm use AI for a will instruction sheet 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 first draft of the will is produced from the instruction sheet and the firm's own will precedents, and a solicitor checks every clause against the client's instructions and signs off the draft.

Why is the instruction sheet more sensitive than the will?

The will is a formal document with the minimum detail. The sheet holds the reasons: who the client does not trust, what she fears, her health and what else is going on in her life. It is also what a solicitor produces to defend a will if it is challenged, so it is written candidly and kept.

Does the Privacy Act cover the information on a will instruction sheet?

Health information is sensitive information under the Privacy Act, and the Act applies to law practices that are covered, for example those with annual turnover above $3 million. A smaller practice may sit outside it. Rule 9 of the Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules applies to every solicitor regardless of the size of the practice.

How is a will drafted from an instruction sheet on Ermos?

The sheet, the firm's will precedents and the testamentary trust clauses sit on your own network, and the unit produces a first draft with the sheet's instructions beside it. The solicitor checks every clause against the instructions and decides what the will can and cannot do.

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