Last updated: September 20, 2026
How Sidebar handles subpoenas, warrants, and other legal demands for your data. The short version: demands for your content belong with you, we tell you before we respond, and we produce as little as the law allows.
Our position is that civil discovery demands for customer content should be directed to the customer — the account holder — not to Sidebar. As a service provider holding your content on your behalf, we will assert available legal protections to direct requesting parties to you, so that you (the attorney whose privilege is at stake) can respond.
When we receive a subpoena, warrant, court order, or government request, we review it for validity, scope, and legal sufficiency before taking any action, and we require legal process appropriate to what is being sought.
Unless we are legally prohibited from doing so — for example, by a sealed order or a non-disclosure requirement — we will notify you promptly of any demand for your data before producing anything, and give you a reasonable opportunity to object or move to quash. You assert your own privilege; our role is to make sure you have the chance to.
We may respond to a good-faith emergency request from law enforcement (for example, a credible threat to life) on an expedited basis and consistent with law. We still limit any disclosure to what the emergency requires and document it.
If we are ultimately compelled to produce after you have had the opportunity to respond, we produce only what is legally required, narrowly construed. Content that is encrypted at rest is produced in the form in which we hold it, where legally permissible.
Content you have deleted under our deletion practices (a deleted conversation or matter, or a closed account) is removed from our production systems, so it cannot be preserved, held, or produced from them in response to any demand. Copies can remain in our database provider's backups until those backups cycle out, as described in our Privacy Policy. We do not restore backups except to recover the service.
If we are served with a valid preservation obligation, we comply as required by law, and — where not prohibited — we notify you so you can take your own steps. A preservation demand does not expand what we collect or retain in the ordinary course.
Legal process should be directed to legal@sidebar-ai.com. Service through this address does not waive any objection or requirement of proper service.