Enterprise deployment
Single-tenant legal AI for law firms
Single-tenant legal AI gives one firm a dedicated application and data plane, but buyers should still examine inference routes, identity, encryption, administration and external service dependencies.
Quick answer
Single tenancy can materially improve isolation and control because a firm's application and data plane are dedicated rather than shared. It does not automatically mean on-premise or zero egress: the deployment may still call approved external models or services unless policy and network controls prohibit that.
Reviewed September 2026
Isolation
Dedicated tenancy changes the failure domain
A single-tenant architecture can simplify customer-specific policy, upgrades, encryption, network controls and incident boundaries. It may also make it easier to satisfy clients that require clearer separation from other firms.
The buyer should ask which components are truly dedicated and which remain shared: application runtime, database, vector store, object storage, model endpoint, observability and support tooling.
Identity
Tenancy does not replace matter permissions
A dedicated firm environment still contains conflicts, ethical walls and matters with different client restrictions. SSO, SCIM, group mapping and matter-level permissions remain essential even when the whole deployment belongs to one firm.
Sanctum is designed so deployment isolation and matter isolation operate together rather than being treated as substitutes.
Egress
Ask where inference actually happens
A single-tenant application can still send prompts to a third-party model. If that route is allowed, the correct description is governed external inference, not zero egress.
For matters requiring a private perimeter, approved local/private inference can be combined with outbound network denial so the application and inference boundary are aligned.
Frequently asked questions
Is single-tenant legal AI the same as on-premise?
No. Single tenancy describes customer isolation. On-premise describes where infrastructure runs. A single-tenant deployment can run in a dedicated cloud account or inside the firm's own infrastructure.
Does single tenancy guarantee zero egress?
No. Egress depends on outbound network and model routes. A single-tenant product can still use external inference unless those routes are disabled.
Why might a law firm prefer single-tenant legal AI?
Dedicated policy, clearer isolation, customer-specific network controls, simpler data residency mapping and greater control over upgrades can all matter for enterprise legal deployments.
Continue comparing
Evaluate on your own matter