KYE Litigation Evidence & Discovery Pack™ — defensible AI-assisted privilege review, document production & legal research.
AI now does privilege review, document production, and legal research — and courts demand the work be defensible when challenged. KYE Protocol™ governs the authority and evidence of AI-assisted litigation and discovery and proves it for litigation: who authorised the privilege determination and under what authority, the provenance of the AI review, the chain-of-custody of every produced and withheld document, that no AI-asserted fact or citation was relied on without a pinned, verifiable source (the no-hallucinated-citation rule the Mata v. Avianca fake-citation sanctions made non-negotiable), and a signed, replay-provable Evidence Pack™ per reviewed item — with a contestability record so any determination can be reconstructed and challenged. KYE Protocol™ governs whether the AI-assisted work may proceed and proves it is defensible — it does not do the legal research, judge the legal merits, write the brief, or replace counsel.
AI now reviews the documents — and the privilege call and the production are the moments accountability concentrates.
Generative review copilots, automated privilege classifiers, and AI legal-research tools are producing determinations that move quickly toward a privilege log, a production set, and the court record. The high-value problem is not the research — it is the action boundary and its defensibility. Four facts converge:
- The consequential moment is the privilege call, the production, and the filing — not the draft. A model's draft is inert; a document logged as privileged, withheld from disclosure, produced in a set, or a citation relied on in a brief is consequential. When the AI-assisted work is challenged — a privilege clawback, a motion to compel, a sanctions inquiry — the court demands to see who authorised it and how it was made.
- The fake-citation problem is now a sanctions risk. Mata v. Avianca (S.D.N.Y. 2023) made it non-negotiable: no AI-asserted fact or citation may be relied on without a pinned, verifiable source. KYE Protocol™ refuses any assertion whose source does not resolve — a fabricated citation never proceeds.
- Privilege determinations must be reconstructable. A privilege call is a non-delegable attorney judgment under FRCP 26(b)(5) / FRE 502. KYE Protocol™ records who authorised the AI-assisted call to proceed, under what authority, and binds a contestability record so it can be reconstructed exactly as made.
- This is a governance wedge, not a legal-research engine. KYE Protocol™ does not compete with the e-discovery platform, the research database, or the AI review tool. It governs the action boundary they feed — the named-authority + chain-of-custody + no-hallucinated-citation + Evidence Pack™ + contestability layer the AI legal ecosystem currently lacks.
Survives a privilege challenge, a motion to compel, or a sanctions inquiry — chain-of-custody-recorded, no-hallucinated-citation, and derivable from public keys alone.
- No hallucinated citations, by construction. Every AI-asserted fact, case citation, or characterisation that proceeds toward a consequential action must carry a pinned, verifiable source. An assertion whose source does not resolve — a fabricated citation — is refused at the action-admissibility gate and never proceeds.
- Privilege calls are authority-bound. Every privilege determination, production, or withholding maps to a recorded named-authority decision — the agent, the determination, the action, and the named supervising attorney or privilege-review lead under whose authority it proceeds. An AI authorised for one purpose cannot proceed under another.
- Chain-of-custody on every item. Every produced and withheld document carries a recorded discovery chain-of-custody — source custodian, every transformation with actor and timestamp, and integrity hash as collected and as produced — so it is authenticable under FRE 901/902 and the disclosure certifiable as reasonable under FRCP 26(g) / CPR PD 57AD.
- Replay-provable Evidence Pack™. Every reviewed item emits a signed Evidence Pack™ binding the authority, the chain-of-custody, the pinned-source provenance, and the review basis — reconstructable and valid at T=0, derivable from published keys alone, retained under WORM — the defensibility artefact a court or opposing counsel can verify offline.
- Contestable when challenged. Every determination carries a contestability record so a privilege clawback, a motion to compel, or a sanctions inquiry can reconstruct it exactly as made and contest it through a recorded route. Bound to FRCP e-discovery, FRE 901/902, the Sedona Principles, UK CPR PD 57AD, and the EU Evidence Regulation — each with a 90-day attestation cadence.
Every consequential litigation determination — authority-bound and evidenced at the action boundary.
One coherent spine governs three specializations — privilege-review, document-production, and legal-research — with no parallel packs. Each AI-assisted determination that moves toward a consequential action flows through the same five rules, on the canonical KYE Protocol™ envelopes.
- 1 — Determination proposed. An AI review produces a privilege call, a production / withholding decision, or a research assertion that begins to move toward being logged, produced, withheld, or relied on.
- 2 — Authority + source check. The Action Admissibility™ Gate verifies the named-authority under which the determination proceeds and that every AI-asserted fact / citation is pinned to a verifiable source, under the §25 Edge Governance Safety Floor. No authority, or an unpinned citation = no action.
- 3 — Chain-of-custody recorded. Every produced or withheld document carries its recorded discovery chain-of-custody — source custodian, every transformation with actor and timestamp, integrity hash as collected and as produced — before it proceeds.
- 4 — Evidence Pack™ + contestability sealed. The runtime emits kye.purpose.request.v1 + kye.purpose.admissibility.v1 + kye.evidence.decision_map.v1 + kye.evidence.pack.v1 + kye.replay.context_seal.v1 in lockstep, binding the authority, the chain-of-custody, the pinned-source provenance, and a contestability record into a signed, replay-provable, WORM-retained Evidence Pack™ — reconstructable for a court, opposing counsel, or a regulator when the work is challenged.
Bound to the e-discovery, evidence-authentication, and privilege perimeter.
The pack binds the canonical KYE™ artefact set to the litigation evidence & discovery perimeter. Every claim resolves to a control row on the bound framework — the five regimes are consumed by the rule pack, never re-mapped (honest scope: KYE™ maps only the authority / evidence / defensibility slices, and cedes the legal merits / document substance / case strategy to counsel and the court).
| Framework | Control area | Pack coverage |
|---|---|---|
| FRCP e-Discovery (26 / 34 / 37 + FRE 502) | Named-authority on the privilege / discovery determination, ESI chain-of-custody, sanctions-reconstruction contestability | partial |
| FRE 901 / 902 | No-hallucinated-citation provenance pin, hash-bound self-authenticating Evidence Pack™ | partial |
| The Sedona Principles (3rd Ed.) | Defensible, reconstructable AI-review process record; replay-provable evidence of the process | partial |
| UK CPR Part 31 + PD 57AD | Named-authority on the disclosure determination & certificate; disclosure-challenge reconstruction | partial |
| EU Evidence Regulation 2020/1783 + eIDAS | Cross-border evidence chain-of-custody & integrity; integrity-bound contestable Evidence Pack™ | partial |
Honest scope. KYE Protocol™ governs the authority, chain-of-custody, provenance, evidence, and contestability of the AI-assisted instruction at the action boundary — whether the work may proceed and how it came into existence, so it is defensible when challenged in court. It does not do the legal research, judge the legal merits, write the brief, render the privilege opinion, or replace counsel. Partial coverage means the bound surface satisfies the authority / evidence / defensibility slice of the control area when paired with counsel’s own legal judgment. KYE™ complements Westlaw, Lexis, Harvey, and counsel — it does not compete with them.
Qualified legal-AI partners — apply through the Foundry.
The KYE Litigation Evidence & Discovery Pack™ is a §68 sector product productised through the KYE Sector Pack Foundry™ Build tier, with Starter, Enterprise, and Regulated commercial tiers; commercial distribution is value-based, qualification-gated, and disclosed under NDA to qualified applicants.