July 17, 2026
Foley Hoag partner Colin Zick was quoted in a recent Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly article examining Shealy, et al. v. Seaside Investments, et al. (“Shealy”). In Shealy, the Business Litigation Session of the Suffolk County (Mass.) Superior Court ruled that under Massachusetts law, documents generated through ChatGPT by a litigant's romantic partner were not protected under the work product doctrine.
In Shealy, the court held that neither the AI-generated materials nor the prompts used to create them were protected, because they were not created at the direction of counsel.
Commenting on the ruling, Zick noted that the court's reasoning aligns with emerging case law (such as United States v. Heppner, from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York). Zick emphasized the central role of legal counsel in extending work product protection to AI-assisted litigation materials. He stated:
The work product doctrine exists to protect the adversarial process by shielding the work of legal advocates. When a party circumvents that process entirely, whether personally as in Heppner or through a romantic partner as in Shealy, the rationale for protection does not exist.
The Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly article discusses the Shealy court's distinction between represented parties and pro se litigants, suggesting that AI-generated litigation materials will be afforded different treatment depending on whether counsel directed or supervised their creation.
