The walk-in file

The hardest file in any practice is the one you have never seen. A new client calls: there is a matter at Saket, it has been running three years, the previous advocate is no longer in the picture, and they are coming in at 4 PM. What they will pay for at 4 PM is not retrieval — it is your read of the situation. But the read needs the retrieval first, and the file is forty hearings deep.

The traditional method is the junior and the photocopies, or an hour on the portal reconstructing the history one hearing at a time. The method below takes about fifteen minutes, which is convenient, because that is what you have.

First: find the case, read its Position — free

Search the case by CNR — no captcha, straight to the record — or by party name if the CNR is somewhere in the client's papers. The case page opens with a Case Intelligence panel, and its first tab, Position, is already filled: how many hearings across what span, the median gap between listings, the judge, and the trajectory — moving, drifting, or parked. Position is not AI; it is the hearing record arranged to answer first questions, which is why it is free, on every plan, for every case you open — including one you have not tracked.

Three years, thirty-eight hearings, median gap widening, purpose stuck on evidence — you now know the shape of the matter before the client sits down. Shape is half the consultation.

Second: the Summary — one credit, the orders digested

The Summary tab is the AI reading of the court's own orders on the file: what was directed, what changed, what the record actually says. Its pricing is the honest kind — one credit unlocks that case for you permanently. Read it again next month, regenerate it after new orders arrive: no further cost. Free and trial accounts carry two unlocks to try this on real files.

Two honesty notes, because they are built in. The credit is spent only when a summary actually generates — if the court publishes hearing entries but no order text, as some districts do, the panel says a summary is not possible and charges nothing. And every summary ends the same way: it reports what the record says — it is not advice, and it may miss what isn't on the record.

The panel has a quiet companion: Similar Precedents, judgments from the corpus with similar facts or sections, each already marked Binding or Persuasive relative to this case's court. Nobody searched for them; they arrive with the case.

Third: Strategy — when you take the brief

If the consultation becomes an engagement, track the case and the third tab earns its place: Strategy turns the full file into a research brief argued from your client's side — grounds, weaknesses, what the record supports — using one brief from your plan. Summary states the record; Strategy argues it. The distinction is printed on the panel itself, and it is the right one: the neutral reading is cheap and repeatable, the partisan reading is scarcer and priced like it.

What the fifteen minutes actually bought

Walk into the 4 PM meeting with: the case's shape (free), the record's story (one credit), the precedents that bear on it (free), and — if you take the matter — a brief from your side (one research credit). What it did not buy is the thing the client is paying for: whether to press for evidence or push for settlement, whether the drifting trajectory is neglect or design. The file reads fast now. The reading of the situation was always the job.

The full breakdown of the three layers and their pricing: the case summary guide.