Last updated: September 20, 2026
The plain-English version of how Sidebar handles your clients' information — written the way we'd want a vendor to explain it to us. If anything here is unclear, ask us and we'll answer in writing.
Layer one: the AI providers keep nothing. Every AI model we offer is reached only over channels covered by written zero-retention terms, which prohibit retaining your content after a request is processed and using it to train models. It is never an opt-in setting you have to find and enable, and where a provider offers a no-retention setting we enforce it in code on every request.
Layer two — Sidebar stores your workspace, like your other practice tools do. Saved conversations, uploaded documents, research memos, and matter memory live in a database partition isolated to your firm, so your work persists between sessions. You control what is saved and you can hard-delete it at any time. The rest of this page is about layer two.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Does the AI provider train on my content? | No. Every model runs under terms that prohibit training on your content. |
| Does the AI provider retain it? | No. Every model is reached only over channels covered by written zero-retention terms: nothing is kept after processing. |
| Does Sidebar store it? | Yes — your saved workspace, encrypted and isolated to your firm, so your work persists. You can hard-delete any of it at any time. |
| Can Sidebar personnel access it? | Only as needed to operate the service or at your direction. Content is encrypted at rest; internal diagnostic tooling is gated and records its use in an access log. |
| How do I delete it? | Delete a conversation or matter yourself (a hard delete, including uploaded files). To close your account and erase everything, email privacy@sidebar-ai.com. |
| What happens after account closure? | Every row and stored file in your workspace is hard-deleted within 30 days of your request. Backup copies expire in the ordinary course and are not restored except to recover the service. |
| What happens after legal process? | We notify you where permitted, give you a chance to respond, and produce the minimum required. Deleted content is removed from our production systems, so there is nothing there to produce; backup copies expire in the ordinary course. |
| Data | Protection |
|---|---|
| Conversation messages | App-layer AES-256-GCM encryption under Sidebar's own key + disk encryption + tenant isolation |
| Extracted document text, chunks, summaries | App-layer AES-256-GCM + disk encryption + tenant isolation |
| Research memos & matter memory | App-layer AES-256-GCM + disk encryption + tenant isolation |
| Uploaded original files & generated documents | Private, access-controlled storage + disk encryption + tenant isolation |
| Client names & drafting-request descriptions | App-layer AES-256-GCM + disk encryption + tenant isolation |
| Conversation titles, matter titles & file names | Disk encryption + tenant isolation (navigation labels stay readable so lists and search work) |
| Usage records (model, tokens, cost, timestamps) | Contains no message content |
The substance of your work — everything a client would consider confidential — is encrypted under Sidebar's own key. Short navigation labels stay readable so your workspace remains searchable, the same trade-off your practice-management software makes. If you'd rather keep client names out of labels entirely, use matter numbers in your titles.
| Action | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| Delete a conversation | Hard delete: messages, extracted text, summaries, and the uploaded original files are removed — not soft-hidden |
| Delete a matter | Hard delete of the matter's workspace records |
| Do nothing | Your workspace is retained until you delete it; internal tool-audit content is auto-purged after 30 days on a daily schedule |
| Close your account | Email privacy@sidebar-ai.com. Full erasure: every row and stored file in your workspace is hard-deleted within 30 days of your request and your account is closed; backup copies expire in the ordinary course |
Because deletion is real, it is also your shield: content you have deleted is removed from our production systems, and backup copies expire in the ordinary course (see Section 7).
Your workspace is isolated to your firm's partition, re-checked on every request. The substance of your work is encrypted at rest under Sidebar's own key, so it is not readable from storage alone. Access to production systems is limited to what is needed to operate the service, and our internal support and diagnostic tooling is gated behind an explicit control, never writes decrypted content to disk, and records every use in an access log.
Connecting Google Drive or Gmail is optional and per attorney; Sidebar searches and reads your account only when you ask it to. The passages it reads become part of that conversation, email drafts you prepare are stored encrypted, and a whole file is stored only if you add it to the firm Library. Sidebar does not edit, move, share, or delete Drive files, does not delete, archive, label, or change mail, does not send mail on its own, and does not sync or index a Drive or mailbox in the background. The connection runs through Composio, which holds your Google credentials, encrypted, and is configured not to store the contents of what passes through it. Google's permission screen shows full access because that is the only form Google approves for the connection service; Sidebar's use is limited as described above. For vendor detail, see our Subprocessor List.
Our commitment, in our Terms of Service and Legal Process Policy: civil demands for your content belong with you, the account holder, not with us. Unless legally prohibited, we notify you of any subpoena or demand before responding and give you time to object or move to quash — you assert your own privilege; our job is to make sure you are standing in front of your own data. And once deleted content has cycled out of backups, it no longer exists for anyone to produce.
ABA Formal Opinion 512 asks you to understand a vendor's practices before trusting it, and we'd rather make that easy than make you dig. Our Data Processing Addendum is posted publicly and applies automatically when you accept the Terms of Service, and we're happy to walk your team through our architecture or complete a security questionnaire. If a question isn't answered here, ask us and we'll answer in writing.