matter-decision-record-audit-stream

LegalTech audit-stream Operator (Spec #1 of the LegalTech 6-pack). Hash-chained append-only ledger of which AI tool read which matter / privileged / work-product document, when, under which ABA Model Rule + state-bar formal-opinion + court-order + engagement-letter binding. Every event carries an explicit privilege_tier — the LegalTech vertical's design innovation versus sibling-vertical audit-streams.

Part of the Kinetic Gain Protocol Suite.

Status: v0.1 draft. Schema at schema/matter-decision-event.schema.json, canonical 7-event chain at examples/anchor-reef-mattermind-2026q3-stream.ndjson, verifier at src/verify.mjs.

Regulatory floor

• ABA Model Rule 1.1 Comment 8 — competence with technology (lawyers must understand the AI tools they delegate work to)
• ABA Model Rule 1.6 — confidentiality of client information
• ABA Model Rule 1.6(c) — reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized disclosure
• ABA Model Rule 1.7 / 1.9 — conflict of interest (current / former clients)
• ABA Model Rule 3.3 — candor toward the tribunal (anti-hallucination guardrail)
• ABA Model Rule 5.3 — responsibilities regarding non-lawyer assistants (extended to AI)
• ABA Model Rule 5.5 — unauthorized practice of law
• Attorney-client privilege (common-law)
• Work-product doctrine (Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(3))
• State bar formal opinions — California (Nov 2023 practical guidance), New York (COSAC), Florida, DC, and others
• Engagement letter — the binding instrument that authorizes representation; the Decision Card is its machine-readable companion

Canonical example

• Buyer: Anchor & Reef LLP
• Vendor / AI system: VendorL MatterMind v4.x

Three invariants enforced by the verifier

1. Privilege-tier consistency — every event has resource.privilege_tier, and any brief-draft-generated / citation-validated / work-product-stamped event MUST be tagged privileged / work-product / joint-defense / common-interest / pre-litigation-investigative-privilege. Never public-record or opposing-party-quarantine.

2. Engagement-letter binding — any matter-data-touching kind MUST include conflict_check.passed_at + conflict_check.engagement_letter_url. ABA Rule 1.7/1.9: no work on a matter without a passed conflict check.

3. Citation-validation-before-production-ready — a work-product-stamped event with outcome.recommendation = "production-ready" MUST be preceded in the same stream by at least one citation-validated event on the same resource. ABA Rule 3.3 candor-toward-tribunal — designed to break the Mata v. Avianca failure mode where AI-hallucinated citations reach the tribunal.

Key design innovations vs sibling-vertical audit-streams

Innovation	Why it's LegalTech-specific
resource.privilege_tier REQUIRED on every event	No other vertical carries privilege as a first-class field; it drives reveal-roles + cross-matter-firewall rules downstream
conflict_check block bound to engagement_letter_url	The engagement letter (not just procurement) is the binding instrument under ABA 1.7/1.9
legaltech.matter.citation-validated kind + invariant	Hard-codes the Mata v. Avianca lesson into the schema itself
Outcome status blocked-by-privilege-tier	Makes vault-contract-aware blocking a first-class outcome, not a side effect

Verify

npm install
npm run build:examples   # builds the canonical 7-event chain
npm run verify           # validates schema + chain + 3 invariants

Reference implementation

A full end-to-end Node.js reference implementation lives at matter-decision-record-audit-stream-reference. It runs the canonical 7-step matter trajectory through an attorney-client vault contract, emits Suite-compliant hash-chained events, and re-validates against this spec's JSON Schema + all three invariants simultaneously in CI. Green CI there is evidence the three invariants are mutually achievable end-to-end, not just individually checkable.

The second of two reference impls in the Suite (the first covered HealthTech's fhir-resource-access-audit) — together they're evidence the parallel-structure thesis works in code.

License: AGPL-3.0 (this spec is MIT; reference implementations are AGPL-3.0).

Composes with

• attorney-client-data-vault-contract-profile — the Decision Card vault contract whose privilege_tier taxonomy drives resource.privilege_tier on this stream
• aba-rule-1-6-readiness-evidence-bundle — readiness evidence bundle this stream supplies events to
• legal-ai-incident-card-profile — where any verifier failure (status: "blocked-by-privilege-tier") becomes a published Incident Card
• state-bar-ai-disclosure-tracker — state-bar AI disclosure lifecycle context
• fhir-resource-access-audit — sibling-vertical audit-stream (HealthTech)
• Kinetic Gain Protocol Suite — umbrella

Compliance posture

Audit-stream readiness scaffolding for AI tools that touch privileged or work-product material. A buyer law firm signing a Decision Card for a legal-AI vendor gets a portable, privilege-aware, hash-chained record of access. This does not constitute ABA-compliance certification, state-bar approval, or a substitute for the firm's own ethics-program — per the standing public-language guardrail across the Suite.

License

Spec text + JSON schemas + example documents + reference verifier: MIT.