When a verdict can't risk contamination, the jury is sequestered: deliberately cut off from the outside world so its judgment stays untainted. Sequester is a legal research appliance built on the same principle — grounded AI that answers from the law with a citation on every sentence, running entirely on a machine your firm owns.
No cloud. No network. Provably.
ABA Formal Opinion 512 requires a client's informed consent before a lawyer puts information relating to a representation into a self-learning generative AI tool — and makes unverified reliance on AI output a potential competence violation under Model Rule 1.1.
“If the use of a generative AI program does not involve the disclosure of confidential information to a third party, a lawyer is not required to obtain a client's informed consent…” — The Florida Bar, Advisory Opinion 24-1 (2024)
A cloud AI answers that rule with contracts — retention terms, vendor audits, consent letters. Sequester answers it with architecture: there is no third party, because nothing ever leaves the room.
Every sentence carries a citation to the exact source paragraph — statute, opinion, or regulation. If the sources don't support an answer, Sequester refuses. Enforced in code, not requested in a prompt.
The system runs inside a network jail with no route to the outside world — verified by an automated test every night, including a control proving the jail itself works. “Air-gapped” is our test result, not our marketing.
A fixed evaluation gate scores every change: right source found, correctly cited, trap questions refused. A wrong citation counts as a worse failure than a refusal. The accuracy record accumulates — and is yours to audit.
Opinion 512 notes that a law-specific tool whose accuracy has been tested “may require less independent verification.” Sequester is built to be that tool.
United States Code, Supreme Court opinions, and federal regulations — three layers, chunked at the citation level lawyers actually use (11 U.S.C. § 362, syllabus and opinion, 37 C.F.R. § 1.56). New case law is ingested weekly through a staged gate: an update that would degrade retrieval accuracy never reaches your box. Your own matter files join the same library — on your hardware, under the same rules.
See it under seal. Recorded sessions of the live engine — every answer verbatim, every citation clickable, every refusal honest. Or bring us a question your firm would never send to a chatbot.
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