Introducing Aquiles: Case Development, Reimagined
Why we built Aquiles — a case development platform that combines AI analysis with scorecard validation, a purpose-built document editor, structured case management, time tracking, and a single source of truth for every matter into one desktop app for legal professionals.
Most legal technology starts with a question: How do we make lawyers more efficient?
We started with a different one: Why do lawyers hate their tools?
The answer, it turns out, is not that lawyers are resistant to technology. It’s that most legal technology isn’t designed for legal work. It’s project management software with a legal skin. Generic editors with a “legal template” pack. AI chatbots that confidently cite cases that don’t exist.
We built Aquiles to fix that.
What Aquiles actually is
Aquiles is a desktop application — a case development platform where you build, write, and analyze legal matters in a single workspace. Not a collection of loosely related features, but an integrated system where everything feeds into everything else.
AI case analysis that reads your actual files. Not the internet, not its training data — your documents, depositions, case logs, and exhibits. Every answer is grounded in your evidence and retrieved using semantic vector search. And before you see the response, a scorecard validation pass checks for unsupported claims, verifies citations, and flags inconsistencies. The first draft you receive is already pressure-tested.
AI outputs that persist. When the AI generates analysis — a research memo, a contradiction report, a fact extraction — that output is saved as a workspace reference. It’s searchable, citable, and available as context for future AI tasks. Your AI work product compounds over time.
A document editor built for legal writing. Rich formatting, slash commands, inline AI assistance, template variables for repeating fields, and full DOCX import/export. Courts still want Word documents, and your editor handles that gracefully.
Case management organized by matter. Each workspace holds documents, a case log, reference files, AI-generated references, and structured case details — all connected, all indexed, all searchable.
A single source of truth for every matter. Maintain authoritative case details — parties, dates, financials, jurisdiction, case status — in one structured record. When the AI drafts a motion, it pulls the client name, court, and case number from this record exactly. No inference. No guessing. No wrong names. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce hallucinations: give the AI structured data to reference instead of asking it to extract facts from unstructured documents.
Time tracking that lives where you work. Document-linked timers that auto-pause on inactivity, generate AI-written billing descriptions from your actual work, survive app crashes, and export to CSV. No separate time tracking app. No end-of-day reconstruction.
What makes this different
There are many legal tech products. Here’s what sets Aquiles apart:
Your data stays on your machine
Aquiles is a desktop app, not a cloud platform. Your documents, case logs, and vector embeddings are stored locally. Nothing is uploaded unless you explicitly use a cloud AI feature — and even then, only the necessary context is sent, processed with zero retention, and never used for model training.
For firms that handle sensitive matters, this isn’t a feature. It’s a requirement.
AI that validates itself
When you ask Aquiles a question about your case, it doesn’t just generate a response — it reviews its own work. The scorecard system evaluates the response against your source documents, checking for unsupported assertions, verifying that cited passages actually exist, and scoring overall accuracy.
This doesn’t replace your judgment. It raises the floor. What reaches you has already survived a round of self-criticism. Hallucinated citations and fabricated references get caught before they make it into your analysis.
Everything feeds into everything
Your case log entries inform your AI analysis. Your AI outputs become searchable references. Your structured case details give the AI authoritative data to reference when drafting. Your time entries track what documents you edited and what case log entries you made during each session. Nothing exists in isolation.
This is the difference between a platform and a collection of features. In Aquiles, the whole genuinely exceeds the sum of its parts.
Designed for hours of use
We spent a lot of time on typography, spacing, and visual hierarchy. Serif headings that evoke a law library without the mustiness. Clean, modern body text. A warm color palette that feels like a well-appointed law office, not a startup dashboard.
This matters more than most software companies realize. Lawyers spend their entire day in their tools. The difference between a comfortable interface and an aggressive one compounds over thousands of hours.
What’s next
Aquiles is in early access. We’re working with a small group of practitioners to refine the experience before a wider launch. In the coming months:
- Collaboration features for firms with multiple attorneys on a matter
- Expanded AI capabilities including case theory generation and argument mapping
- Integration APIs for connecting to existing document management systems
If you’re a legal professional who’s tired of adapting to tools that weren’t built for you, request early access. We’d love to hear how you work — and build something that actually helps.