BriefCatch yesterday announced the launch of BriefCatch 3 to help legal professionals improve legal writing. The new version makes BriefCatch available for the first time to Mac users, features real-time editing, a rebuilt rules engine, enhanced Natural Language Processing and AI, and more.
According to the Press Release, BriefCatch now offers more than 11,000 on-demand, legal-specific writing suggestions. These recommendations will help lawyers make more persuasive arguments. It can also help judges write better opinions.
BriefCatch 3 can spot clunky clauses a lot of lawyers like to use and then substitute better and clearer language. It works by comparing the language you are asking about to a universe of well written materials from judges and top lawyers. Most of the work is done by AI, although there is still some whittling down of examples by humans.
According to Ross Guberman, founder of BriefCatch and former practicing lawyer, “This new version instantly spots and fixes lawyer-specific typos and mechanical errors, cleans up citations, cuts through the legalese, spices up word choice, trims sentences, and makes your analysis come alive.”
This launch is the third major version of the product. The original version was launched in 2018. The release–along with the features and benefits–has been well reported in excellent articles by Jean O’Grady and Bob Ambrogi. I’ll not replicate their analysis. I did get a chance to talk to Guberman about the new launch and came away with three important insights.
First, according to Guberman, the biggest surprise is that many courts have purchased the product, and judges are now using the product. Says Guberman, most of the federal Circuit courts are now using it, and a couple of Supreme Court judges have recently bought it as well. Even some state trial courts are now using it.
