Can I give client data to an AI if I anonymise it first?
In short: removing names helps, but it does not make the text safe by itself. It also does not replace any of the legal duties.
Anonymisation or pseudonymisation?
The two words often come up together. Legally they mean different things.
Anonymised
Nobody can identify the person again. Only then is it no longer personal data.
Pseudonymised
The names are replaced, but a mapping table exists. While it exists, the data stays personal data (Art. 4 no. 5 GDPR, recital 26).
What the law requires
Three rules still apply when names were removed first. Removing them replaces none of these duties.
Section 203 StGB
The provision protects the client's secret. Disclosing it without authorisation is a criminal offence.
Section 43e BRAO
The provision governs when lawyers may engage service providers. The contract with the provider must be in text form.
Art. 28 GDPR
When a provider processes personal data for the firm, the GDPR requires a data processing agreement (AVV). That includes the provider of the language model.
What an anonymisation tool can and cannot do
Automatic detection helps, but it has fixed limits.
Detection has gaps
Automatic detection misses unusual names, company names, file numbers, licence plates and addresses in free text.
A miss is a leak
What is missed leaves the firm with the text. That nothing was missed cannot be proven.
So a person reviews
Serious tools put a human review before the text leaves the firm. They keep roles such as claimant and defendant, so the text stays readable.
How Klaracase avoids the problem
Klaracase starts earlier: data minimisation by design (Art. 5(1)(c) GDPR). The client file does not have to reach Klaracase at all.
The file stays with you
With Klara MCP, the connectors for Claude and comparable AI hosts, Klaracase delivers public case law and norms into your own AI tool.
A map instead of generated text
The research map answers a question with a map of norms, decisions and references. It writes no generated text.
Model stages on EU inference
Klaracase's own model stages run on inference in the EU. Recipients, purposes and retention are listed on the privacy and security page.
Citation Check reads only to verify
Citation Check reads a brief only to verify its citations, and returns one verdict per citation.