In 2016, Casetext, the legal research startup, introduced CARA, a tool that uses artificial intelligence to analyze users’ uploaded briefs and memoranda and find relevant cases the document missed. Lawyers could use it to vet an opponent’s brief for omitted cases or to double-check their own research before submitting the document.
CARA won recognition as new product of the year from the American Association of Law Libraries and inspired other legal research companies to develop brief-analysis products of their own, including EVA from ROSS Intelligence, Clerk from Judicata and Vincent from vLex.
Today, Thomson Reuters enters the fray with the launch of Quick Check, included at no additional cost with all subscriptions to its legal research platform Westlaw Edge. (It is not available as a stand-alone product.)
Like CARA, Quick Check enables a lawyer to upload any document that contains at least two citations and obtain a list of other relevant authorities that the document does not cite. It also warns if any cases the document does cite may not be good law.
During a preview briefing for the media Tuesday, TR executives said that Quick Check is unlike other brief-analysis products in that it delivers only a limited set of results with only the most highly relevant citations, in order to make it more efficient for lawyers to use.
“To upload a motion or brief to a system and bring back a search result is an easy thing to do,” said Mike Dahn, senior vice president of Westlaw product management, in an apparent allusion to competitors’ products. “We’ve gone beyond the simple way to approach this problem to focus on bringing back items that might have been missed, but also to make it efficient.”
Dahn said that Quick Check had been in development since 2016 and slated to be included
