Why this result mattered
Functional tie
The principal comparison placed Qwen 3.8 and Claude under concealed A/B labels.
Both answers direct counsel to preserve and produce Categories A and E through protected channels, sequester Category C with notice and a privilege protocol, and return or delete Categories B and D only through a documented forensic process. Both prohibit disclosure to the journalist or prospective employer, reject Avenor’s blanket demand, and leave Serena on the same materially safe handling and communications path.
Fast audit
Open the underlying record
These links open all four answers, the principal blind judgment, original prompt, and sealed key.
Prompt and sealed key
The key is an audit reference. It was not shown to the contestant systems and did not determine the comparative verdict.
Read the original matter prompt
Question 28: The Files in Serena's Apartment
Your role
You represent Serena Holt, a former payroll manager who reported wage falsification and retained company files. Advise what she may preserve or provide to counsel and regulators, what must be sequestered or returned, and what she must not disclose publicly or to a new employer.
Governing law
Assume the following protected-activity and confidentiality rules apply:
An employee may engage in protected activity by reporting reasonably suspected legal violations to counsel, a regulator, or another authorized channel.
Limited retention of documents the employee lawfully accessed may be protected when the documents are reasonably necessary to substantiate the report, the employee takes no more than reasonably necessary, and disclosure is confined to counsel or an authorized regulator.
Protected activity does not authorize hacking, access beyond job permissions, mass collection, retention of unrelated confidential information, disclosure to the press, or use for competitive advantage.
A confidentiality agreement remains enforceable as to trade secrets, customer personal information, unrelated proprietary material, and other legitimately protected information, but it may not prohibit truthful reporting to a regulator or counsel.
Attorney-client privileged material remains privileged when an employee copies it without authority. Receiving counsel must stop review, sequester it, notify company counsel, and seek an agreed or court-supervised protocol rather than use the substance.
Personal notes created by the employee are the employee's property unless they reproduce protected company material beyond what is reasonably necessary for a legal claim.
An employer may discipline independent confidentiality or access misconduct consistently with comparator practice. It may not use an overbroad confidentiality theory as a pretext to punish the underlying report.
Once a dispute is anticipated, both sides must preserve relevant evidence. Return or deletion should occur only through a documented protocol that preserves forensic integrity and does not destroy evidence.
Counsel should analyze categories separately. The existence of one improper category does not strip protection from every lawfully retained item, and protected documents do not immunize unrelated taking.
Facts
Serena reported to the labor agency that Avenor Services altered overtime records. Before resigning, she copied approximately nine gigabytes from her company laptop to an encrypted drive.
The drive contains:
Category A
Twenty-three payroll spreadsheets showing original and edited overtime entries, plus three emails from the vice president directing managers to “move excess hours into the next period.” Serena regularly accessed these files in her job.
Category B
A full customer export containing names, home addresses, bank-account data, and identification numbers for 14,000 customers. The export is unrelated to payroll. Serena had technical access because payroll and billing shared a reporting tool, but she never used the customer export in her work.
Category C
An outside-counsel memorandum labeled “Privileged and Confidential” analyzing wage exposure. Serena opened the first page, recognized the label, stopped reading, and copied the folder with the rest of the drive.
Category D
Pricing models, product source code, and a sales strategy for a service Serena's prospective new employer competes against. None concerns payroll or her report.
Category E
Serena's dated personal notes of meetings, including quotations from managers, and screenshots of two payroll screens she personally used.
Serena has shared nothing outside her current counsel. She wants to send the entire drive to the labor agency and a journalist “so the company cannot bury it.” Her prospective employer has asked whether she has “inside proof that Avenor cuts corners.”
Avenor demands immediate return and deletion of every file and threatens a trade-secret suit. It offers no preservation protocol and asserts that possession of any company file defeats Serena's retaliation claim.
Assignment
Counsel Serena category by category on:
- Which materials may be preserved for the wage report.
- Which may be supplied to counsel or the labor agency and under what protections.
- The customer export and unrelated proprietary material.
- The privileged memorandum and receiving counsel's duties.
- Personal notes and screenshots.
- The journalist and prospective-employer requests.
- Avenor's return demand and the need for a forensic protocol.
- Confidentiality, trade-secret, access, and retaliation exposure.
- The concrete next communication and handling sequence.
Read the sealed key
Q28 key (Employee-Retained Documents)
- Category A is the strongest protected set: Serena lawfully accessed the payroll records, they directly substantiate the report, and limited disclosure to counsel and the labor agency is reasonably necessary. Use a secure, targeted production rather than sending the entire drive. Missed: core evidence is surrendered or buried in an indiscriminate disclosure.
- Category B should be quarantined and returned or securely deleted only under a documented forensic protocol. Customer bank and identity data are unrelated, excessive, and not protected by the wage report. Missed: Serena creates severe confidentiality and data-security exposure.
- Category C must be sequestered immediately. Counsel should stop review, notify Avenor's counsel, and arrange return, clawback, or court review without using its substance. Missed: receiving counsel compounds an unauthorized privilege intrusion.
- Category D must not be retained for competitive use or shared with the new employer; preserve it temporarily only as needed for the handling protocol, then return or delete under supervision. Missed: a whistleblower case becomes a trade-secret misappropriation case.
- Category E personal notes are generally Serena's and may be preserved; screenshots tied to the payroll claim may be treated like Category A if limited and securely handled. Notes reproducing unrelated protected material require redaction or protocol. Missed: personal recollection is discarded or used as a route to retain unrelated data.
- Send nothing to the journalist or prospective employer. Public and competitive disclosure fall outside the protected channel and materially increase injunction and damages risk. Missed: Serena forfeits a defensible evidence-retention position.
- Reject Avenor's demand for immediate unverified deletion of everything, but propose counsel-to-counsel imaging, hashing, category segregation, targeted regulator production, privileged-material return, and supervised destruction or return of unrelated data. Missed: evidence is destroyed or improper possession continues without control.
- Serena's retaliation claim is not defeated by possession of every file, but Avenor may discipline or sue for independent Category B-D misconduct if treated consistently. The advice must preserve the wage report while curing excess. Missed: either protected activity is treated as total immunity or one overcollection erases it.
Direct judge report
The report below is preserved from the Qwen 3.8 versus Claude verdict record.
Read the preserved judge report
Basis. Both answers direct counsel to preserve and produce Categories A and E through protected channels, sequester Category C with notice and a privilege protocol, and return or delete Categories B and D only through a documented forensic process. Both prohibit disclosure to the journalist or prospective employer, reject Avenor’s blanket demand, and leave Serena on the same materially safe handling and communications path.
[A] rejected: proposed declaration that Categories B, C, and D “were never opened” — record contradicts this as to Category C and supplies no such fact as to B or D.
[A] rejected: categorical claims about breach-notification regimes, inevitable disclosure, remedies, and litigation strength — record lacks the jurisdiction-specific rules required.
[B] rejected: suggestion that counsel may minimally review Category B — internally inconsistent with its later instruction to stop review and unnecessary because the record already identifies the category.
Failed candidates. Answer A’s unsupported declaration and forensic-certainty language — record support failed and ordinary verification safely neutralizes it.
Failed candidates. Answer B’s possible minimal review of Category B — different conduct failed after its express sequestration instructions.
Failed candidates. Answer B’s suggestion to crop or redact screenshots — different conduct failed because both answers require preservation of originals and contemplate redacted production copies.
Failed candidates. Differences in risk ratings and legal characterization — different conduct failed.
Failed candidates. Differences in wording about ownership of screenshots and access authorization — concrete consequence failed because both answers prescribe the same retention, sequestration, and disclosure limits.
Hard stop. It cannot be completed with a concrete, record-supported consequence.
All six pairings
Every pair of the four model answers was judged independently under the same evaluation instrument.
Open the six head-to-head results
| Pairing | Result | Why it mattered | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen 3.8 27B vs Claude Opus 5 | Functional tie | Both answers direct counsel to preserve and produce Categories A and E through protected channels, sequester Category C with notice and a privilege protocol, and return or delete Categories B and D only through a documented forensic process. | Judge record |
| Qwen 3.8 27B vs DeepSeek V4-Flash-0731 | Functional tie | Both answers direct counsel to preserve and narrowly produce Categories A and E, sequester Categories B–D, notify Avenor regarding the privileged memorandum, and resolve return or deletion through a documented forensic protocol. | Judge record |
| Qwen 3.8 27B vs Qwen 3.5 27B | Functional tie | Both readers preserve and provide only Categories A and relevant portions of E to counsel or the labor agency, sequester Category C, and return or delete Categories B–D only through a documented forensic protocol. | Judge record |
| DeepSeek V4-Flash-0731 vs Claude Opus 5 | Functional tie | Both answers direct counsel to secure and forensically segregate the drive, preserve and provide Categories A and E only through protected channels, sequester Categories B through D pending a documented protocol, notify Avenor concerning privilege, and prohibit disclosure to the journalist or prospective… | Judge record |
| DeepSeek V4-Flash-0731 vs Qwen 3.5 27B | Functional tie | Both answers direct Serena to preserve and segregate the drive, disclose only Category A and relevant Category E materials to counsel and the labor agency, sequester Categories B–D, stop review and notify Avenor concerning Category C, and resolve return or destruction through a documented forensic protocol. | Judge record |
| Qwen 3.5 27B vs Claude Opus 5 | Functional tie | Both answers put counsel on the same material path: preserve and forensically copy the drive, segregate the categories, provide only relevant payroll evidence and notes to the agency, sequester privileged material, return or destroy unrelated data through a documented protocol, and prohibit disclosure to… | Judge record |
Rejected-point diagnostic
Judge-attributed rejected points for this matter across all six pairings:
| Qwen 3.8 27B | 2 |
|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4-Flash-0731 | 5 |
| Claude Opus 5 | 5 |
| Qwen 3.5 27B | 10 |
This is a review-burden diagnostic, not a universal hallucination measure.