HiCourt technical deck
What it does today: everyday legal work. Research a question, assess a position, summarize documents, build a chronology, compare two versions, proofread a filing, draft a document, check the citations in a draft you already wrote, and more. It comes back in Word or text, with spreadsheets where the work has rows. A lawyer reviews, verifies and signs the work.
Our system produces better results because it does not take its own work on trust. It works from your files and your firm's permitted past work, checks the cases it cites, and sends anything flagged back to be fixed before a lawyer reads it.
The cases the work cites are looked up in the published case law: a lookup, not a guess. A separate checking stage that wrote none of the work then reads the opinion and tests each case against the claim it is cited for. Uncertain and missing results stay visible. Quotations, pinpoints and whether a case is still good law are not checked yet.
Every authority shown in this deck is fictional: invented parties, a fictional
State of Example, and reporter series that don't exist
(Ex.3d, Ex.App.2d, Ex.Supp.) at volume 000 page 000.
On a deck about citation fabrication, printing a realistic-looking fake case would be a poor
way to make the point.
The trade, stated first
HiCourt optimises for how much independent work has happened before a human reads the output, and accepts a latency and cost bill to get it. That is a deliberate architectural choice rather than a claim about anyone else's, and your team should see the bill before deciding whether it is worth paying.
The floor
One inference
One pass over an assembled prompt, however good the assembly. Nothing looks the cited cases up, nothing separate checks the work, and nothing reads what came out before you do. Every system in this category contains at least this, including ours.
One HiCourt matter
What sits on top
A close reading of your request and files, the firm's permitted past work, the draft itself, a lookup of the cases it cites, a separate check of each one, a bounded repair loop for anything flagged, then a second round of checks over the finished document and against what you asked for.
Looked up, not guessed
Whether a case exists is settled by a lookup in the published case law, never by asking an AI whether it is real.
Checked by a separate stage
The check that tests each case against its claim wrote none of the work it is checking.
Fixed, then checked again
Anything flagged goes back to be corrected or withdrawn, and the fix is checked again. The run records why the loop stopped.
All of that checking happens before your lawyer reads a word, and it takes time. It suits the matters where being right matters more than being fast. Time saved has not been measured yet; a pilot is where your firm would measure it.
A due-diligence checklist for the category
You will be asked to assess several serious products, and we are not going to characterise anyone else's architecture for you — we do not run their systems, and you would be right to distrust a comparison written by a competitor. So the left column is a question to put to any vendor in this space, including us. Every one of them is answerable by demonstration rather than by assertion.
Your own material
Does it work from the firm's own documents and past work, or only from what you paste in?
Both. Files you add are read and indexed, and for research and analysis the firm's permitted past work is recalled, labelled reviewed or not, clean or with known problems.
Independence
Is the work checked by something that did not write it?
Yes. The checking stage wrote none of the work it checks, and it reads the opinion itself rather than the draft's account of it.
Ground truth in the loop
Is a citation's existence settled by a lookup or by asking an AI — and is an AI ever asked to confirm a case it just cited?
By a lookup. The cases the work cites are looked up in the published case law, and a case that cannot be found is flagged, not assumed. Existence is never decided by asking an AI.
Provenance
Can a sentence in the deliverable be mapped back to the authority it rests on, across every stage?
Each cited claim in the finished document is tied to the case it rests on, and every claim carries a status, including “not checked”. A full trail from every sentence back through every step is not built yet.
Unsettled points
Where the law or the record supports two readings, does the output show one or both?
Both. Unresolved points and uncertain results are kept and shown, not smoothed into one confident answer. A check result is not proof that a legal conclusion is correct.
The defect channel
What happens to a flagged item — is it repaired and re-checked, or reported to me? And what terminates the loop?
Repaired and re-checked. Anything flagged goes back to be corrected or withdrawn and is checked again. The loop is bounded and the run records why it stopped; anything still flagged stays flagged for your lawyer. A draft you paste in for checking is never rewritten.
Where checking sits
Does verification run over the draft, or over the rendered artifact the firm actually receives?
Both. The work is checked before it is written up, then the finished document's cited claims are checked again, along with a check that it does what you asked. The findings travel with the download; they never rewrite the document.
Retrieval permissions
Is the ethical wall enforced before scoring, after scoring, or in the interface? And do derived artifacts inherit it?
Before anything is searched. Ethical walls and matter membership decide what a run can draw on, so what a person may not see is not searched, recalled, shown or used. Past work is recalled only where the person asking may see the matters it came from.
Auditability
Six months from now, what can the firm reconstruct about why a given citation was relied on?
Each run keeps a protected record of the request, the files and past work it used, what was checked, flagged and fixed, and what was still open. Only people still allowed to see the matter can read it.
Where your files live
Where does firm material rest, is that decided per matter or once for the whole firm, and what leaves the estate during a run?
Each firm runs in its own dedicated hosted environment: its own server, database, storage and encryption keys. During a run the text of the work is sent out for AI processing; nothing is sent that the person asking may not see. Office-machine and per-computer placement are not offered yet.
The left column asks any vendor for evidence, us included. Where something is not built yet, our answer says so.
The whole mechanism, on one picture
CLICK TO EXPAND
The overview separates what is built today from what is still to come. It shows the mechanism, not a record of any one run.
The core mechanism
A lookup and a reading answer different questions. The lookup settles whether the case exists; the separate check reads the opinion and asks whether it supports the claim. Neither on its own would be enough.
The cases the work cites are looked up in the published case law. A case that cannot be found, or that matches more than one case, is flagged rather than assumed.
A found case is not the same as a correct one: finding it says nothing about whether a quotation is accurate or whether the case is still good law. Not found means not found in the case law searched, which is a reason to look hard, not proof it was invented.
A separate checking stage, which wrote none of the work, reads passages of the opinion and tests whether the case supports the claim it is cited for. This is an assessment of the evidence in front of it, not proof that a legal conclusion is right.
A problem it finds sends the citation back to be fixed. Missing passages and mistakes are still possible even when the check finds nothing, which is why your lawyer reads the sources.
Existence is settled by the lookup, so the check's job is to test support, not to decide whether a case is real.
A status records what these checks found. It does not certify that the case is good law or that the work is ready to sign.
Coverage
Six different things a firm needs to know about a citation. The badges say which HiCourt answers today and which are not built yet; finding a case says nothing about its quotations or whether it is still good law.
Checks cover case citations in full form. Short references such as Id. and supra, statutes, regulations, court rules and treatises are not looked up, and facts in your documents are not checked against the record.
The chain
Stage 0
Pick the task, say what you need and add the matter's files. Each file is read and indexed and shows as ready before a run can use it. Permissions come first: a run draws only on what the person asking may see.
For research and analysis, the firm's permitted past work is recalled too, labelled reviewed or not, clean or with known problems.Stage 1
The work is drafted from a close reading of your request and files, with the permitted past work beside it. It looks for what hurts your position as well as what helps it.
Past work informs the draft. It never replaces checking the law.Stage 2 first checks
The cases the draft cites are looked up in the published case law. A separate checking stage that wrote none of the work then reads each opinion and tests the case against the claim it is cited for. Uncertain and missing results stay visible.
Before anything is written up.Stage 3
Anything flagged goes back to be corrected or withdrawn, and the fix is checked again. The loop is bounded. Anything still flagged is carried forward for your lawyer, not dropped.
Why the loop stopped is recorded on the run.Stage 4
What survived the checks, and every flag still open, is written up as one document in the form you asked for.
A run that cannot finish keeps what it has, labelled incomplete. Nothing is dressed up as done.Stage 5 final checks
The finished document's cited claims are checked again, and a separate check asks whether it does what you asked. Every claim carries a status, including “not checked”.
Findings travel with the download. They never rewrite the document.Stage 6
Your lawyer reviews, verifies and signs. The finished run is filed into the firm's memory automatically, and a signed review makes a new version for later work to draw on.
Later work draws on it only where the person asking may see it.Every step above runs today. Not built yet: quotation and pinpoint checks, and whether a case is still good law.
Placement
The cases the draft relies on are checked before anything is written up, so a bad citation is caught and sent back while it is still easy to fix.
Some of what is checked early is later dropped from the finished work. That is the cost of checking early, and it is worth paying.
A fixed citation is checked again before the work moves on. The loop is bounded, the run records why it stopped, and anything still flagged is carried forward, not dropped.
A draft you paste in for checking is never rewritten; it comes back as a table, citation by citation.
The argument for checking again applies with more force at the end, and it is easy to miss: writing the final document is itself AI work, not an assembly step. Writing can introduce a case that was never checked, or state a case more strongly than the source supports.
So the finished document's cited claims are checked again, and it is checked against what you asked for. Each claim carries a status, and the findings travel with the download without rewriting it.
Checking happens before the write-up, after each repair and over the finished file. Quotation and pinpoint checks, and whether a case is still good law, are not built yet.
Where the thinking happens
HiCourt holds the AI accounts and makes every call, so your firm needs no contract, key or procurement cycle with an AI company. How the system does the work is ours to tune, and it improves as better AI arrives. What does not change is what gets checked and what you are shown.
What we claim is the mechanism, not a number: the work is looked up and checked before your lawyer reads it. No accuracy figure has been measured, and we do not quote one.
Where the thinking happens · settled
Where your files live
Storage and processing are separate questions. Where the library rests does not decide where the text of a run travels: it goes to commercial AI for processing, and only what the person asking may see is sent.
The firm's library
Files you add are read and indexed. Every piece below is treated as firm material and protected the same way.
The library belongs to one office. It is never pooled with another firm's, and never used to improve anything outside your firm.
Storage
A · private store we run
B · machine in the office · not yet
C · per workstation · not yet
HiCourt runs as A today. Office and workstation placement are not offered yet, and each will need its own access, retention and recovery proof before it is.
And where the library rests does not bound where excerpts travel at query time. That is the processing question on slide 9, and the two decisions should be made together.
The hard part
This matters more than where the disk is, and it is the layer we would push hardest on in anyone's product including ours. An index doesn't naturally respect an ethical wall: ask it an ordinary question and it returns whatever is semantically nearest, which may be from a matter the asker must not see. The person asking has done nothing wrong, which is precisely why the control has to sit in the system rather than in people's judgement.
Ethical walls and matter membership decide the set of documents a person may draw on before anything is searched or ranked. A result from outside that set is refused, and something being cached does not make it eligible.
The firm's past work is recalled only where the person asking may see the matters it came from. A matter walled off from someone stays out of everything they run.
Permissions are checked again during a run, so a wall added or a member removed takes effect before the next step, not at the next sign-in.
Lifecycle
Deleting a document properly means deleting every copy of it. Deletion honours legal holds today; making it reach every copy below, backups included, is not finished yet.
Not yet: enforcing your firm's retention schedule across run records and every library copy.
Deletion honours legal holds today. Carrying holds through restores and every retained record is not finished yet.
Each run keeps a protected record of the request, the files and past work it used, what was checked and flagged, and what was still open. Only people still allowed to see the matter can read it.
The flags
A flag a firm can't act on precisely is worse than no flag, because it spends attention without directing it. Each result keeps its source, its reason and its status separate, and missing evidence stays missing rather than counting as a pass.
✓ NO PROBLEM FOUND
The case was found and the check found nothing against the claim. That is not a certificate: quotations, pinpoints and whether the case is still good law are not checked yet, so your lawyer still reads it.
✕ NOT FOUND
The case could not be found in the published case law searched. That is a reason to look hard, not proof it was invented. A citation that matches more than one case, or a lookup that failed, is marked separately.
⚠ CLAIM NOT SUPPORTED
The check read the opinion and it does not support what the work says it does. The citation went back to be fixed; if the flag is still there, the repair did not clear it.
? UNCERTAIN
The check could not settle it either way, or the opinion text was not available. It stays open and is marked for your lawyer rather than being counted as a pass.
≠ QUOTE MISMATCH
Not checked yet. Quotations and pinpoint pages are not checked automatically; your lawyer reads the quote in its source and page context.
⚑ NEGATIVE TREATMENT
Not checked yet. Nothing today tells you whether a case has been overruled, reversed or limited; your lawyer checks that.
∅ UNCITED: a statement of law with no case attached has nothing to look up. A separate sweep for those is not built yet; the document marks what was and was not checked.
Over to you
You're the reader who can tell me where this breaks in a real firm. The six I'd most want an answer to: