SEAL Legal Runtime

Why Legal Needs a Sealed Runtime Now

AI is moving from “drafting help” to acting: sending filings, triggering approvals, touching client assets.

Today most firms still rely on:

• Case / matter systems, email, and checklists around the work
• GRC and IAM that sit beside workflows, not in front of the filing button
• After-the-fact investigations when something slips through

That leaves four recurring questions that are hard to answer under pressure:

1. Was this the right lawyer or system acting in scope?
2. Was this filing permitted in this court or practice area?
3. Did the client actually consent under firm policy?
4. Can we prove what our controls did at the moment of action?

Those are not model questions.
They’re authority and evidence questions.



SEAL is built specifically for that gap.

What SEAL Is (and Is Not)

SEAL Legal Runtime is a sealed pre-execution authority gate for legal work. It is refusal infrastructure for legal AI – a sealed governance layer in front of high-risk actions.

SEAL does:

• Sit as a non-bypassable gate between your internal tools and courts, regulators, counterparties, and internal approvals
• Enforce who may do what, where, and when at runtime
• Require identity, scope, consent, and authority to be satisfied before anything moves
• Return approve / refuse / supervised override for every governed action
• Emit sealed, hash-anchored artifacts for each outcome – approval, refusal, override – that you can attach to matters, discovery packets, or regulator/insurer files

SEAL does not:

• Draft, file, or sign anything
• Replace lawyers, judges, or your own models
• Act as your DMS, case management, or GRC platform

Think of SEAL as the seatbelt and referee for legal AI and automation:

• the seatbelt locks when something unsafe is attempted;
  
• the referee blows the whistle when someone plays outside the rules.

The Three Questions SEAL Helps You Answer

For every high-risk action in a SEAL-wired workflow, you gain a clean, auditable answer to:

1. Was this action allowed?
2. Did it execute under the right authority and scope?
3. Can we prove that – with a sealed record – months or years later?

If a governance platform can’t help you answer all three, it’s monitoring, not control.

How SEAL Works – In Legal Terms

Every SEAL decision attaches to five governance anchors you already recognize:

1. Who is acting?

• Partner, associate, staff, intern, AI agent, system account

2. Where are they acting?

• Practice / vertical and venue (e.g., criminal defense, civil litigation, bankruptcy)

3. What are they trying to do?

• Specific legal task or filing (e.g., motion for bail, motion to dismiss, release funds)

4. How quickly?

• Standard, expedited, emergency

5.Has the client consented?

• As defined in your own policies, guidelines, and engagement terms

Your systems send SEAL a small, structured “intent to act” payload: who, where, what, how fast, and under which authority.



SEAL then:

• Checks identity and role against your IdP / SSO
• Checks scope against your licensed practice areas and internal policy
• Checks consent/authority against your GRC and client-instruction systems

…and returns one of three outcomes:

• ✅ Approve – action may proceed; a sealed approval artifact is issued
• ❌ Refuse – action is blocked; a sealed refusal artifact explains why
• 🟧 Supervised override – action may proceed only with a named supervisor; an override artifact records who accepted the risk

If anchors are missing, inconsistent, or out of policy, SEAL fails closed – you get a refusal with reason codes, not a “best-effort” pass.

Where SEAL Sits in Your Stack

SEAL is not another application for lawyers to log into. It’s an upstream control layer your systems call in the background.

At a high level:

1. Your systems

• DMS, document automation, AI tools, portals, e-filing, matter systems
• They send “filing intent” requests to SEAL: who / what / where / how fast / with what authority

2. SEAL Legal Runtime (vendor-hosted)

• Evaluates identity, scope, consent, and safety under your rules
• Returns approve / refuse / supervised override with a sealed artifact

3.Your environment

• On approval: existing workflows proceed, with a sealed approval record attached
• On refusal: your systems halt the action and surface the refusal artifact to the right people

You own GRC and identity. SEAL enforces what you declare; it does not invent roles or policy.

Guarantees GCs & Managing Partners Can Rely On

From a leadership perspective, SEAL makes a small set of hard promises:

1. Non-bypassable gate

• All governed filings pass through the same pipeline: intake → checks → decision → record.
• There is no “side door” approval path.

2. Fail-closed by design

• Ambiguous identity, unknown roles, unlicensed verticals, missing consent, malformed payloads, or unreachable providers all result in sealed refusals, not silent passes.

3. Client-owned authority and evidence

• Roles and permissions come from your IdP / SSO and GRC; SEAL never builds a shadow org chart.
• Sealed artifacts live in tenant-controlled audit stores under your retention and jurisdiction rules.

4. Sealed, testable behavior

• Internal logic is never exposed; regulators and auditors test SEAL by sending inputs and reading outputs – approvals, refusals, overrides – with stable codes and explanations.

Why This Matters for Legal Leadership

For managing partners, GCs, and legal ops leaders, SEAL is not “another AI tool.” It is:

• A way to adopt AI and automation without surrendering legal judgment to opaque systems
• A concrete answer when regulators, clients, or courts ask: “How did you supervise this?”
• A path to make “risk refused, not just reported” part of standard operating procedure

You keep sovereignty over law, policy, and people.

SEAL keeps the judgment perimeter sealed and enforceable.

Guarantees GCs & Managing Partners Can Rely On

From a leadership perspective, SEAL makes a small set of hard promises:

1. Non-bypassable gate

• All governed filings pass through the same pipeline: intake → checks → decision → record.
• There is no “side door” approval path.

2. Fail-closed by design

• Ambiguous identity, unknown roles, unlicensed verticals, missing consent, malformed payloads, or unreachable providers all result in sealed refusals, not silent passes.

3. Client-owned authority and evidence

• Roles and permissions come from your IdP / SSO and GRC; SEAL never builds a shadow org chart.
• Sealed artifacts live in tenant-controlled audit stores under your retention and jurisdiction rules.

4. Sealed, testable behavior

• Internal logic is never exposed; regulators and auditors test SEAL by sending inputs and reading outputs – approvals, refusals, overrides – with stable codes and explanations.

How Firms Typically Start