Nice… catch!
Despite following BriefCatch’s Ross Guberman on social media for years, I’d only ever seen static images of the product evaluating judges with exceptional writing. And no one could argue with the system’s conclusions, these posts never really prepared me for watching BriefCatch work in person.
It was worth the wait.
At Legalweek, I got the chance to sit down and watch BriefCatch work in real time. Deploying around 11,000 grammatical rules to catch mistakes, weak phrasing, consistency issues, vague verbs, and more, the system’s speed and accuracy consistently impressed. The product highlights problem areas and provides easy-to-adopt suggestions.
This week, Guberman announced that BriefCatch had an allowed patent for “Methods and Systems for Intelligent Editing of Legal Documents,” which is exciting for the company but not really a surprise. While the user experience is exceptional, it’s clear the nuts and bolts we don’t see are impressive.
Redundant verbs? Here’s a list of alternatives. Useless, awkward verbiage? Cut that out. Five words where one would do? Choose one from this list. It’s even catching boneheaded Bluebooking errors. Meanwhile, the product leverages natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to fine-tune its editing rules and BriefCatch scoring system.
For what it’s worth, that scoring system looks dangerously addictive. Some lawyer will miss a deadline trying desperately to get to a perfect score.
Sorry, not everyone can be Elena Kagan. But you can get close!
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
