Your Brief Agent Assembles the Motion Record While You Write Argument
What it takes off your plate
The AgentWorks Brief Agent takes the assembly work of motion practice off your litigation associates. Today an associate given a summary judgment motion spends the first evenings not on the argument but on the parts that already exist in the file: the factual background pulled from pleadings and deposition transcripts, the procedural history rebuilt from the docket, the caption and formatting rules looked up again for this court. Then the citations come back from the partner's review with formatting errors, and the table of authorities is rebuilt by hand after every edit.
Motion drafting is the highest-value work in litigation, and too much of it is spent on work that is not advocacy. The argument section, the part the Client is paying for, gets whatever time is left.
What the Brief Agent does, step by step
The Brief Agent starts with the people who hold pieces of the record, then does the drafting work.
- Confirms the assignment. When a partner assigns a motion on the Matter, the Brief Agent confirms the motion type, the court, the filing and hearing dates and the responsible associate, and puts the filing deadline and internal review dates on the team's calendar.
- Chases what the record is missing. It asks the paralegal for transcripts or exhibits not yet in the file, and drafts the request to the Client's contact for declarations or documents the attorney has identified, for the attorney to approve and send.
- Reminds before each review date. It reminds the associate and partner as internal drafts fall due, so the partner's review is not squeezed into the final day.
- Assembles the factual background. From pleadings, discovery responses, deposition transcripts and exhibits in the case file, it drafts a factual background with record citations for each statement.
- Builds the procedural history. From the docket and prior orders, it lists the filings, rulings and deadlines that matter to this motion, in order, with docket references.
- Applies the court's rules. It formats the draft to the court's requirements: caption, page or word limits, font and spacing, required sections and certificates, drawing on the local rules and the judge's standing orders the firm has on file.
- Checks the citations. It checks each citation's format and flags any authority it cannot match or whose later history needs an attorney's review. It does not decide whether an authority is still good law; the associate does.
- Generates the table of authorities. It builds the table of contents and table of authorities from the draft, and rebuilds them after each round of edits.
The associate receives a formatted draft with the background and procedural history in place and writes the argument.
Where the work is recorded
The Brief Agent records its work on the Matter, so the team can see what was drafted, from what and by whom.
In your document management system, such as NetDocuments, each draft is saved to the Matter with its version history, and the record citations link back to the source documents so a reviewer can check a statement in one step. In Clio, the filing deadline, review dates and any record requests sit on the Matter with their status.
On the Client record in the CRM, the team sees any document or declaration request sent to the Client's contacts, each follow-up and each reply, so the partner speaking to the Client knows what is still outstanding.
The next morning, the associate opens the Matter and finds the formatted draft, the list of citations flagged for review and the record items still missing. They pick up exactly where the agent left off. An agent that could not record its results would just be a chatbot; this one leaves a draft every reviewer can trace to the record.
What your people do instead
Your associates spend their hours on argument and strategy: framing the issue, choosing which facts to lead with, answering the other side's best point. Your partners review substance instead of formatting. Your paralegals spend less time rebuilding tables and more time preparing exhibits and supporting the Client's witnesses.
The Client gets a motion whose argument received the attention it deserved, and the attorney has time to explain to the Client what the motion is for and what happens next.
The same division of work runs through the firm's other documents. See how the Document Assembly Agent drafts from the Matter and how a Legal Research Agent finds your firm's prior memos first.
One next step
To see whether motion drafting or another workflow should go to an agent first, take the free Legal Industry Assessment. It shows which workflow an agent should take first in your practice. To see the AgentWorks Brief Agent alongside the other agents built for law firms, visit the Legal industry page.
See where the Brief Agent would start in your legal business.
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