Companies integrating AI into their products and operations are moving faster than their legal structures can keep pace. Oak & Hill's AI Legal Infrastructure practice was built to close that gap — and to issue the credential that proves you did.
ARIA stands for the five sequential layers of legal risk that every AI-integrated company carries. They are not independent checklists — they are interconnected domains where decisions made in one layer create obligations and vulnerabilities in others.
Partial application produces partial protection. The ARIA Review assesses all five layers together, identifies how they interact, and produces a formal scored credential you can present to investors, acquirers, and customers.
Schedule Your ARIA ReviewThe legal rights, restrictions, and obligations governing the data your AI uses. Who owns your training data — and what did you promise when you got it?
How liability is distributed across your AI value chain. When an AI output causes harm, who pays — and does your contract actually answer that question?
Who legally owns what your AI creates. AI-generated outputs may not be copyrightable — and most commercial agreements haven't caught up to that reality.
Whether your organization can demonstrate responsible AI use. In a dispute, the first question isn't what the AI did — it's what your company did to prevent harm.
Which legal frameworks govern your AI operations today and in the next 24 months. The regulatory landscape is not empty — and the absence of one federal law doesn't mean risk is absent.
| Risk Area | What the Exposure Looks Like | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Data Rights & Provenance | Using training or fine-tuning data without confirmed rights; platform agreements that transfer data to vendors without review | Critical |
| Vendor Liability Allocation | No negotiated AI-specific provisions in SaaS, API, or platform contracts; vendor terms disclaim all liability for outputs | Critical |
| Output IP Ownership | AI-generated content delivered to customers with undefined ownership; no work-for-hire or assignment provisions in place | High |
| Internal AI Governance | No formal AI use policy; employees using AI tools without documented oversight; no incident response protocol | High |
| Regulatory Exposure | No analysis of CCPA/GDPR implications for AI data pipelines; EU AI Act applicability not evaluated; sector-specific rules ignored | Medium |
| Employment & IP Assignment | Offer letters and IP agreements predate AI; contractor work product involving AI not covered by assignment clauses | Medium |
Until now, there has been no standardized way for a company to demonstrate formally and credibly that its AI legal posture has been professionally evaluated. The ARIA Certification was built to fill that gap.
Think of it as what SOC 2 did for data security, or what a 409A valuation does for equity pricing — a formal, scored, attorney-issued answer to the question every investor and acquirer is now asking.
| Standard | What It Answers | Who Relies on It |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | Is this company's data handling secure and audited? | Enterprise customers, investors, insurers |
| 409A Valuation | What is the fair market value of common stock? | IRS, boards, employees, investors |
| ARIA Certification | Is this company's AI legal infrastructure formally structured? | Investors, acquirers, customers, insurers, regulators |
The cost of addressing AI legal exposure in advance is fixed and finite. The cost of addressing it reactively — in a deal, a dispute, or a regulatory inquiry — is not.
Schedule Your ARIA Review — $5,000The ARIA Playbook is a plain-English diagnostic tool for founders, operators, and senior leaders. It walks through all five risk layers, explains how exposure accumulates in practice, and includes self-assessment checklists for each domain.
It won't tell you everything is fine. It will tell you exactly where to look.
Download the Playbook — FreeThe ARIA Certification is a fixed-fee engagement that delivers a comprehensive, cross-layer analysis of your company's AI legal exposure — with a formal score, a reliance-grade certification letter, and a prioritized remediation roadmap.