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BigLaw

★ 101 Open GitHub ↗

AI for legal work.

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# BigLaw

### The BigLaw tool stack. Open. Free.

**What Am Law 100 firms spend $2M/year on — consolidated into one open-source platform, free for solos, boutiques, and small firms.**

[![License: Apache-2.0](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-Apache--2.0-2563eb.svg)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/LICENSE)
[![Go](https://img.shields.io/badge/Go-1.25-00ADD8.svg)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/biglaw-go/go.mod)
[![MCP](https://img.shields.io/badge/MCP-stdio%20server-E6B450.svg)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/docs/integration/mcp.md)
[![Vector search](https://img.shields.io/badge/Vector%20search-in--process-7c3aed.svg)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/biglaw-go/internal/agents/registry.go)
[![Status: Experimental](https://img.shields.io/badge/Status-Experimental-red.svg)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/docs/security.md)

**The platform is a single static Go binary** — it runs end-to-end on a Raspberry Pi with
4 GB of RAM, or entirely on local models (Ollama / LM Studio). Benchmarks vs the original
TypeScript implementation: 1.25×–6.9× ([methodology](docs/benchmarks-go-vs-ts.md)). The backend
lives in [`biglaw-go/internal/`](biglaw-go/internal/); the TypeScript original is preserved at
the tag `typescript-final`. The only active TypeScript is the React workbench and the small
TypeDB HTTP sidecar. Both compile with TypeScript 7's native compiler; neither duplicates Go
application logic.

</div>

---

## ⚠ Experimental — read this first

**BigLaw is an experimental research project, not production-hardened software.** It handles
credentials, client matter data, and privileged legal communications, and it has not undergone
a formal independent security audit. Before anything touches real client data, read the
[security notice](docs/security.md) and the [legal notices & disclaimers](docs/legal-notices.md)
— they are not boilerplate — and engage an independent security review. `AUTH_ENABLED=false`
is the local-dev default; **never expose the API on a shared network without enabling
authentication.** Nothing this software produces is legal advice.

---

## What BigLaw Is

BigLaw is a cross between a **platform**, an **experiment**, and an **art project**.

As a platform, it is the most comprehensive open legal AI stack that exists — spanning research,
drafting, redlining, e-signatures, briefing, docketing, billing, and collaboration across a bench
of 100+ agents in a structured multi-round debate architecture.

As an experiment, it is an ongoing attempt to answer a genuine engineering question: how much of
the $50,000–150,000 per-lawyer-per-year legal tech stack can be replicated with open models, open
protocols, and open code? The answer so far is: most of it.

As an art project, it is a provocation. The cost math is not a sales pitch. It is a
statement about who gets access to tools and who doesn't, and what happens when that changes.
It is deliberately maximalist, deliberately opinionated, and deliberately not finished.

You are not buying a product. You are picking up a thing that is still being built and deciding
what to do with it.

BigLaw isn't a chatbot with a legal prompt. It's an **orchestration engine** that replaces a stack
of vendor contracts with a single open-source platform. It runs *DyTopo rounds* of granular
epistemic, conceptual, and writing agents over an **in-process vector agent registry** — and puts
a **debate + verification protocol** between every finding and the page. Low-confidence or
challenged findings stop at a **human gate** before they reach final synthesis.

**Big Michael** is the agent that lives inside your firm's collaboration channels. @-mention him
in Teams or Slack and he dispatches tasks to BigLaw's bench, surfaces matter status and client
briefings, and posts back when work is done — turning the platform into a conversational layer
on top of everything else the firm already uses.

---

## The math

> The tab in your browser you never click is a $300,000 invoice.

Westlaw + CoCounsel, Practical Law, Contract Express, LexisNexis + PSL, Kira, iManage, Everlaw,
Ironclad, Clio Insights, Solve Intelligence: **$50,000–152,000 per lawyer, per year.** BigLaw
covers the same ground for the price of your model-provider API bill — at typical usage for a
ten-lawyer firm, roughly **$2,400/year against $500,000+**.

The line-by-line cost chart, the math by firm size, and the feature-by-feature comparison:
**[Why BigLaw](docs/why-biglaw.md)**.

Every tool in that chart is a subscription you can cancel the day you run setup.sh.
Not all at once. One at a time. Start with whatever costs the most.
Run the matter through BigLaw. Compare the output. Keep what you cancel.

**Go. Do likewise.**

---

## The console

A real matter, mid-flight — the bench self-organising, then the cited result.

| Round-by-round communication graph | Cited, verified synthesis |
|---|---|
| ![Rounds](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/collateral/screenshots/03-rounds.png) | ![Synthesis](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/collateral/screenshots/04-synthesis.png) |

| Live admin · DyTopo depth, modes, DocuSeal | Convene a matter — client/matter numbering |
|---|---|
| ![Admin](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/collateral/screenshots/06-admin.png) | ![Submit](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/collateral/screenshots/02-submit.png) |

> Screenshots are captured from the running web console against a live matter
> (client `10482` · matter `10482-014`). The interface, DyTopo communication graph,
> human gates, and per-round agent routing are exactly as the system produced them.

---

## Sixty seconds to running

```bash
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discover-legal/BigLaw/main/setup.sh | bash
```

Needs git + Docker. Clones if needed, seeds `.env`, brings up the three-container stack,
and waits for the REST API at **http://localhost:3102**. Add your `QWEN_API_KEY` (or
local-inference settings) to `.env` — unconfigured connectors degrade gracefully.

```bash
bash setup.sh                                        # already cloned? same thing
go run ./biglaw-go/cmd/biglaw                        # native (Go 1.25+), REST on :3101
go run ./biglaw-go/cmd/biglaw demo                   # end-to-end tour: seed → tabular review →
                                                     # CP checklist → counter-redline (~$0.03)
cd ui && npm install && \
  BIG_MICHAEL_API=http://localhost:3102 npm run dev  # web workbench on :5173
```

Full install paths, the workbench tour, and your first task: **[Getting started](docs/getting-started.md)**.
Opening this repo in Claude Code registers BigLaw as an MCP server: **[MCP guide](docs/integration/mcp.md)**.

---

## What's on the bench

- **100+ agents, 4 tiers, DyTopo rounds** — Need/Offer matching builds each round's comm graph; every finding survives CitationGate → adversarial debate → verification → human gate → [Architecture](docs/architecture/overview.md)
- **Verbatim citation grounding by construction** — hybrid RAG + staged extraction + multi-pass writer took a local 7B from ~0% to 94% grounded citations → [Grounding & coverage](docs/architecture/grounding.md)
- **The negotiation stack** — counter-redline loop with per-change rationale cards, Redtime per-clause negotiation timelines with silent-edit detection, Integrity Check on every inbound document → [Negotiation](docs/features/negotiation.md)
- **Tabular review** — 50 docs × 30 columns with a citation-verification ladder (exact → tolerant → paraphrase judge → ensemble) and a verified tally on the export → [Tabular review](docs/features/tabular-review.md)
- **Document production** — `.docx` generation, tracked-changes redlining, PDF/OCR, DocuSeal e-signing → [Document production](docs/features/document-production.md)
- **Four-tier playbook cascade** (`client > matter > personal > firm`) driving playbook-aware redlines → [Playbooks](docs/features/playbooks.md)
- **Big Michael in Teams & Slack** — matter status, hub-and-spoke client briefings, task dispatch from an @-mention → [Big Michael](docs/features/big-michael.md)
- **Court deadline calculator** — FRCP / UK CPR / EU Competition, calendar vs business days, cited → [Deadlines](docs/features/deadlines.md)
- **Research engines** — CourtListener-backed citation checking, headnote extraction, precedent generation → [Research engines](docs/features/research-engines.md)
- **Billing & LPM** — automatic 6-minute billable units, LEDES 1998B, pre-bills, OCG compliance, daily status reports, docket/regulatory/budget monitors → [Billing & LPM](docs/features/billing-and-lpm.md)
- **32 connectors across 15 providers** — CourtListener, Westlaw, Everlaw, Ironclad, iManage, Clio (OAuth), Drive, Box, Slack, and more → [Connectors](docs/integration/connectors.md)
- **Court-ready audit trail** — hash-chained JSONL with every tool call attributed to the responsible lawyer → [Audit trail](docs/operations/audit-trail.md)
- **Per-call cost tracking** with cache-aware pricing and local power estimates → [Cost tracking](docs/operations/cost-tracking.md)
- **Lawyer voice fingerprinting** — drafting agents mirror the assigned lawyer's style from their own writing → [Tone profiles](docs/operations/tone-profiles.md)
- **Cloud or fully local** — Qwen by default, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or air-gapped Ollama / LM Studio / vLLM → [Local inference](docs/deployment/local-inference.md)

## The benchmark

On Harvey **LAB** (60-criterion all-pass rubric, rubric hidden from the agents; judge
claude-sonnet-4-6): claude-haiku-4-5 raw, in Harvey's own harness, scores **41/60**; the same
model on the BigLaw pipeline scores **50/60**, and a cross-vendor GLM-5.2 run tops the board at
**52/60** — all clean, zero starved rounds. A free, on-prem qwen2.5:14b scores **39/60** (a new
local record) on the resilience-wave build. Spot-checked citations came back verbatim on the
pipeline runs where the raw run fabricated statutory penalty figures. The full ladder,
including the confounded runs that were found and fixed along the way, and the
technique-by-technique account: **[Benchmarks](docs/benchmarks.md)**.

---

## Documentation

Everything lives in **[docs/](docs/index.md)**, one page per topic:

| | |
|---|---|
| **Get started** | [Getting started](docs/getting-started.md) · [Why BigLaw](docs/why-biglaw.md) · [Legal notices](docs/legal-notices.md) |
| **Deploy & operate** | [Security](docs/security.md) · [Run modes](docs/deployment/run-modes.md) · [Models & persistence](docs/deployment/models-and-persistence.md) · [Local inference](docs/deployment/local-inference.md) · [Secrets](docs/deployment/secrets.md) · [Access control](docs/operations/access-control.md) · [Audit trail](docs/operations/audit-trail.md) · [Cost tracking](docs/operations/cost-tracking.md) · [Tone profiles](docs/operations/tone-profiles.md) |
| **Features** | [Negotiation](docs/features/negotiation.md) · [Tabular review](docs/features/tabular-review.md) · [Document production](docs/features/document-production.md) · [Playbooks](docs/features/playbooks.md) · [Big Michael](docs/features/big-michael.md) · [Deadlines](docs/features/deadlines.md) · [Research engines](docs/features/research-engines.md) · [Billing & LPM](docs/features/billing-and-lpm.md) · [The bench's tools](docs/features/agent-tools.md) |
| **Architecture** | [Overview](docs/architecture/overview.md) · [Grounding & coverage](docs/architecture/grounding.md) · [Model routing](docs/architecture/model-routing.md) |
| **Integrate & extend** | [REST API](docs/integration/rest-api.md) · [MCP / Claude Code](docs/integration/mcp.md) · [Connectors](docs/integration/connectors.md) · [Plugins & adapters](docs/integration/plugins.md) · [Jurisdiction & NOSLEGAL](docs/integration/jurisdiction-and-noslegal.md) |
| **Benchmarks & provenance** | [Benchmarks](docs/benchmarks.md) · [Local accuracy journey](docs/local-accuracy-journey.md) · [Provenance & licensing](docs/provenance.md) · [CHANGELOG](CHANGELOG.md) |

---

## License

Apache-2.0 ([`LICENSE`](LICENSE)) with an express patent grant — use it, modify it, embed it,
run it as a service; attribution per [`NOTICE`](NOTICE) is all that is asked. The document tools
are a clean-room reimplementation with a published spec and an executed attestation record
([docs/clean-room-attestations.md](docs/clean-room-attestations.md)) — the full
story: **[Provenance & licensing](docs/provenance.md)**.

BigLaw

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