Commercial law firm
AI Precedent Search
We keep paying twice for analysis we have already done.
A commercial practice whose accumulated expertise sits in several thousand matter files that are, in any practical sense, unsearchable. A fee earner asks a colleague whether the firm has handled something similar; the colleague half-remembers a matter from years ago; finding it means trawling the document system by client name. Frequently the work is simply redone.
The product
AI Precedent Search
The queue, the approval screen, the exception list. Every number is readable and every handover is visible.
PRPrecedent
Search the authorised corpus
AssociatesRead only
- Questions this month
- 894
- Answered from precedent
- 617
- No precedent found
- 277
- Median time to source
- 14s
- Citations returned
- 100%
- Barrier conflicts blocked
- 23
69%
logged as gaps
never unsourced
Query
Have we advised on a change-of-control clause triggered by an internal group reorganisation?
M-2291 · Harlow Group
Corporate · March 202494…the clause was held not to be triggered where the ultimate beneficial ownership remained unchanged following the intra-group transfer…
M-1877 · Calder Holdings
Corporate · November 202288…advised that the drafting was wide enough to capture a reorganisation, and recommended an express carve-out for transfers within the same group…
M-3014 · Northgate Partners
Commercial · July 202571…counterparty consent was sought on a without-prejudice basis notwithstanding the carve-out, to avoid argument at a later financing round…
Every result returns the source passage, matter and date. The system retrieves and cites; it never summarises into a conclusion and never advises.
Built by Koderead to show the operating system. Figures are a worked example.
Watch one record
Where the handover actually happens.
A screenshot shows a state. This follows a single record through the system, including the point where it stops and waits for a person.
Fee earner asks a question11:04
Previously this meant interrupting a senior colleague.
Authorised corpus searched11:04
Only what the firm decided to index, never a shared drive.
One result withheld11:04
A barrier applies. Its existence is not disclosed either.
Source read, judgement applied11:05
The passage and its date, not a summary to trust blindly.
A person is doing this
- Question
- Change-of-control on reorganisation
- Practice area
- Corporate
- Usual route
- Ask someone who might recall
- Usual outcome
- Often redone from scratch
The system retrieves and cites. It never advises, never summarises into a conclusion, and never drafts unsupervised
Deeper into the build
The screens where a person is still in the loop.
A queue is easy to show. What matters is what happens at the record, at the approval, and at the exception — because that is where the design either holds or does not.
- Query
- Change-of-control on reorganisation
- Results in corpus
- 4 matters
- Returned to this user
- 3 matters
- Withheld
- 1 matter
- Reason
- Information barrier
- Enforced at
- Data layer, not prompt
System recommendation
One matter is withheld because this fee earner sits the wrong side of an information barrier. The existence of the matter is not disclosed, the count is not inflated, and no passage from it appears in the answer.
- Barrier enforced at data layer
- No leakage into the summary
- Access logged
Conflicts checking remains a supervised human process. The system never advises.
Twenty-three barrier conflicts blocked this month. Enforcement lives in the data layer, never in an instruction the model could be argued out of.
- Questions asked
- 894
- Answered from precedent
- 617
- Median time to source
- 14s
69%
- No precedent in corpus187Logged as a gap — the firm has not addressed this
- Precedent exists but predates a rule change54Flagged with the date for a human to weigh
- Withheld by information barrier23Not disclosed, not counted in results
- Ambiguous question13Clarification requested
277 items awaiting a person, grouped by cause so one decision clears a class rather than a case.
The gap list is the second product. It tells the firm precisely which questions it has never answered in writing, ranked by how often someone needed one.
The change
Where the work moved.
Amber marks a step the system performs. Solid ink marks one a person still performs. The counts above each column say the same thing in numbers.
Today
6 human steps- Performed by A person
Fee earner has a question
- Performed by A person
Asks a senior colleague
Interrupting them
- Performed by A person
Colleague half-remembers a matter
- Performed by A person
Document system trawled
By client name
- Performed by A person
Often not found
- Performed by A person
Analysis redone from scratch
After
3 human steps- Performed by A person
Fee earner asks the question
- Performed by Automated
Authorised corpus searched
Barriers enforced at data layer
- Performed by Automated
Source passages returned
With matter and date
- Performed by A person
Reads the source, not a summary
- Performed by A person
Applies professional judgement
- Performed by System
Gap logged where nothing found
- Automated
- A person
- System
- Customer
Scope of authority
What this system is not allowed to do.
On a real engagement this is a document your operations lead signs before anyone writes code.
- The system retrieves and cites. It never advises, never summarises into a conclusion, and never drafts unsupervised
- Privilege and information barriers are enforced at the data layer, including between matters in the same firm
- Conflicts checking remains a supervised human process
- Where the corpus does not cover a question, the system says so rather than composing something plausible
- Every output carries its source so it can be verified before it leaves the firm
Built from
The solutions behind this build.
Your version of this
This took a mapped workflow before it took any code.
If this looks like your commercial law firm, the place to start is the same place we started here.