Briefpoint is an AI-powered platform designed to automate one of the most tedious aspects of litigation: discovery responses and requests. It allows for the uploading of discovery requests and automates the process of drafting objections and responses, thereby eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so lawyers can focus on drafting what matters.
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Background
Founded by Nathan Walter, a former litigator, Briefpoint aims to transform the way law firms and legal departments handle high-volume, high-stakes documentation. Nathan’s journey into legaltech began with frustration. After five years of practicing litigation in Southern California, primarily on the defense side, Nathan grew disillusioned with the inefficiency of the legal system. He recounted scenarios where clients, though not liable, were forced to settle lawsuits because the cost of litigation—particularly attorney fees—often outweighed the potential judgment amount.
This concern culminated for him during what he says was a particularly rough mediation, sitting in a small sweaty room for eight hours even though opposing counsel had no case.
“There was one point that I'll never forget,” said Nathan, “where I'm sitting across a table from him. And he says, well, my client would never agree to that or something to that effect. And I had the email, the smoking gun email, and I showed it to him and he broke down in tears, actually crying, saying, oh, I worked so hard in this case. But then he gathered himself and he said, I don't care. I'm going to slam my fist on the table. I'm going to take you all to court and I'm going to inflict as much attorney's fee damage as possible. And at the end of the day, when the smoke settles, you're going to pay a lot more than what I'm asking for today.”
It was infuriating, says Nathan, but he was right. “We ended up paying him.” This realization, compounded by witnessing the high cost of mundane litigation tasks, inspired Nathan to seek a solution. He started teaching himself coding with the intent of producing a tool that could automate his work so that he could take his clients' cases further without destroying them financially and bring access to justice back to the point where people don't need to throw money away to protect themselves to defend frivolous lawsuits.
In 2016, during the first wave of technology-assisted review (TAR) in e-discovery, Nathan began experimenting with AI. Over time, he created prototype tools to automate repetitive litigation tasks. In February 2021, he founded Briefpoint, officially launching the platform in June 2022.
The Problem Briefpoint Solves
At its core, Briefpoint addresses a long-standing problem in litigation: the inefficiency and costliness of discovery work. Discovery—the process of exchanging legal information between parties—requires meticulous attention to detail. As Nathan put it, discovery work is “rote, boring, and exhausting,” yet must be executed perfectly every time due to the high stakes involved.
Traditional methods of handling discovery are manual and time intensive. Attorneys and support staff spend countless hours drafting, formatting, and reviewing documents, often juggling large volumes of requests and responses. This not only drains resources but also detracts from the more substantive aspects of legal practice, such as trial preparation and legal strategy.
Briefpoint automates the creation, formatting, and management of discovery documents, significantly reducing the time and effort required. By doing so, it enables attorneys to focus on higher-value tasks while lowering costs for clients.
Comprehensive Use Cases
Briefpoint’s initial product was designed to automate discovery responses, but its capabilities have expanded to include a range of discovery-related tasks.
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Discovery Responses:
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Automates the entire lifecycle of discovery documents, from formatting to integrating client responses.
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- Uses AI to suggest and draft objections, ensuring compliance with legal standards.
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Propounding Discovery:
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Generates tailored discovery requests—including interrogatories, requests for admission, and production requests—by analyzing the complaint.
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Employs fine-tuned AI models to create objections that are likely to withstand scrutiny, minimizing back-and-forth disputes.
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Future Expansion: Briefpoint aims to automate motions to compel, a higher-pain but lower-volume task, before progressing to complaints, answers, and motions across the litigation timeline.
By automating these processes, Briefpoint alleviates the burden on attorneys and support staff, delivering high-quality, ready-to-use documents in seconds.
AI at the Core of Briefpoint
Briefpoint stands out for its innovative use of AI, particularly generative AI, to power its platform. The system relies on fine-tuned versions of OpenAI’s GPT models, including GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, tailored to specific litigation tasks.
Instead of a single AI model generating entire documents, Briefpoint employs a modular approach with multiple narrowly focused models. For example, creating a single discovery document might involve 11 different models working sequentially to ensure accuracy and relevance. This strategy minimizes the risk of AI "hallucinations" and enhances reliability.
To maintain quality, Briefpoint benchmarks its AI against general-purpose systems like ChatGPT and ensures its models outperform these alternatives in mimicking attorney behavior. For example, its objection-generation AI reportedly aligns with attorney preferences 1,400% more closely than GPT-4 out of the box.
Target Demographic: Solo Practitioners and Beyond
Briefpoint’s user base spans law firms of all sizes, but its primary audience comprises solo practitioners and small firms engaged in civil litigation. These attorneys often lack the resources to hire dedicated support staff and rely on Briefpoint to handle repetitive tasks efficiently.
The platform also appeals to contract paralegals and support staff, many of whom now leverage Briefpoint to improve their productivity. By offering a cost-effective alternative to traditional methods, Briefpoint empowers smaller practices to compete with larger firms.
What Sets Briefpoint Apart?
Although the eDiscovery market is crowded, there are not so many tools using AI to automate discovery requests, and even fewer that handle propounding discovery. Briefpoint therefor sets itself apart through its core functionality, in addition to three other factors:
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Accuracy: Unlike competitors that rely on basic optical character recognition (OCR), Briefpoint uses advanced computer vision models to process documents. This approach ensures higher accuracy, even with corrupted or poorly formatted PDFs.
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Automation: Briefpoint is AI-first, automating not just text generation but the entire document creation process. Its "perfect document guarantee" underscores its commitment to quality and reliability.
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Affordability: By targeting solo practitioners and small firms, Briefpoint offers a more accessible price point than competitors catering to corporate legal departments.
Briefpoint was the first company to use large language models for drafting litigation documents, giving it a significant head-start in leveraging generative AI for legal workflows. The solution exemplifies how AI can transform legal practice by addressing inefficiencies and reducing costs.
