IP Dispute Risk in LLM Co-Training with Private Contract Data

IP Dispute Risk in LLM Co-Training with Private Contract Data If you've ever been the one nervously redacting a 47-page SaaS contract at midnight, you know how much valuable insight those legal documents hold. I've been there—shuffling through clauses like "mutual indemnification" and thinking, "This belongs in a machine's brain." That’s how the idea starts. You think, “Why not train an LLM on all this contract gold?” And then, just as you're ready to hit ‘fine-tune’, your legal instincts kick in like a brake pedal. Wait. Whose IP is this? Law firms, SaaS vendors, and legal tech startups all dream of proprietary fine-tuning—an edge that makes their AI smarter, faster, and eerily persuasive in drafting NDAs or predicting indemnity clauses. But here’s the catch: co-training an LLM on client contracts, license agreements, or internal legal docs could be a legal minefield, especially if the IP rights aren't air-tight. In this post, ...