Descrybe.ai Introduces Affordable Legal Research Toolkit Featuring AI-Powered Citator and Brief Checker

Descrybe.ai Launches Paid Legal Research Toolkit Featuring an AI-Driven Citator

Descrybe.ai, known for its free legal research platform, has introduced a paid upgrade called the Legal Research Toolkit. This new suite of features includes an AI-based citator named the Cytator, designed to enhance legal research for professionals by providing detailed case treatments and citation analysis.

Founded by Kara Peterson and Richard DiBona, Descrybe was created to democratize access to legal information. The platform uses AI to generate summaries and abstracts of court opinions, making them searchable and accessible. Last year, Descrybe added bilingual summaries and improved search capabilities, further broadening its appeal.

The free version of Descrybe remains available. The new paid upgrade costs $10 per month for non-commercial users and $20 per month for commercial users, such as lawyers. The upgrade includes several tools that add significant value for legal professionals:

• The Cytator. A proprietary citator that tracks both subsequent and “backwards” treatment of cases, showing how a case has been cited and how it treated its own cited authorities.
• Brief Checker. Upload or paste your brief text to identify hallucinated, inaccurate, or incomplete case citations, including verification against the Cytator to confirm if citations remain good law.
• Legal Issue Explorer. Compare how courts across jurisdictions handle similar legal issues, even when described differently.
• Enhanced Search. Search using natural language, keywords, or case names with Boolean operators, with results displaying Cytator flags.
• Case Analysis. Detailed insights per issue, including holdings versus dicta, procedural posture, circuit splits, and precedential value.

The Citator Challenge

Citatior tools are critical to legal research, helping lawyers verify whether cases are still considered good law. Shepard’s (LexisNexis) and KeyCite (Westlaw) have long dominated the market, but many newer platforms are developing their own versions. Descrybe’s Cytator stands out by offering both forward and backward citation analysis, showing how a case has been treated and how it treated its cited authorities.

Testing the Cytator reveals that it uses colored flags—green for positive, red for negative, yellow for cautionary, black for neutral—to mark cases in search results. Clicking on a case opens tabs that include opinion analysis, Cytator treatments, backward citator details, and the full opinion text.

While the Cytator generally identifies subsequent treatments correctly, some errors appear, especially in cases with ambiguous citations. For example, in Kourouvacilis v. General Motors Corp., the system flagged a positive citation as cautionary, likely due to the complexity of the citation context. Such challenges are common with AI-based citators, and data completeness is still improving—some cases currently lack Cytator treatments but are expected to be updated soon.

Brief Checker Tool

The Brief Checker helps identify problems with case citations in legal briefs. Users paste the brief text into the tool, which highlights case citations with color codes indicating their status. This tool currently checks only case citations, not statutes or other sources, and does not verify quotation accuracy. Westlaw citations aren’t recognized and appear as not found. Despite these limitations, the Brief Checker offers a quick way to catch citation errors or hallucinations.

Practical Value for Legal Professionals

Descrybe’s Legal Research Toolkit delivers valuable features at a low cost, especially for solo practitioners, small firms, or legal professionals seeking affordable research tools. While it currently focuses on case law and does not include statutes or secondary sources, it provides a solid foundation for case research.

With Casetext’s acquisition by Thomson Reuters and subsequent changes, alternatives like Descrybe fill an important gap in the market. Its combination of AI-driven summaries, bilingual support, and an innovative citator can streamline legal research tasks without a heavy price tag.

For legal professionals interested in further enhancing their AI skills and leveraging automation in legal work, exploring courses on Complete AI Training could be beneficial.