Can AI help us draft particulars of claim or a defence?

Yes, for the preparation around a statement of case, and for a first pass at the factual sections. It should not decide what case you are running, which causes of action you plead, or what you allege against whom. Those are judgement calls that belong to a qualified person, and the statement of truth that goes on the document is a professional and personal responsibility that no tool shares.

Most of the time that goes into particulars of claim or a defence is not spent writing prose. It is spent finding the facts in a file, working out what can actually be supported, and checking that every allegation has something behind it. That is the part where a tool earns its place.

What AI can usefully do before the draft

Before anyone writes a word of the pleading, the work is factual. A tool that reads the matter papers can:

• Build a chronology of events from the correspondence, contracts and notes, with a page reference against each entry.
• Pull out the documents that matter: the contract and any variations, the key letters, the notices, the invoices, the dates of performance and breach as recorded on the file.
• Set out what the papers say about a specific issue, for example when a particular notice was sent and how, so you can see whether the point is pleadable at all.
• List what is missing. If the file has no signed copy of the agreement, or no record of a conversation the client remembers, you want to know that before you plead it, not after the other side asks for it.
• Check a draft against the file: does each numbered paragraph have a document behind it, and does that document say what the paragraph says it says.

For a defence, the same work runs in reverse. Take each paragraph of the particulars, ask what the file says about it, and see where the real disputes lie. That gives you an honest basis for admitting, not admitting or denying, rather than a reflexive denial of everything.

What you should not hand over

A statement of case is an argument about what happened and why it matters in law. The decisions inside it are yours:

• Which claims to bring and against which defendant.
• What to plead and what to leave out, including the tactical question of how much detail to give.
• Whether an allegation is properly arguable and supported by evidence you can actually produce.
• How to plead quantum, and what to put in a schedule rather than the body.
• Limitation, jurisdiction, applicable law and any procedural requirement that must be satisfied before the claim is issued.

An AI tool asked to draft a pleading from a short description will produce something that reads like a pleading. That is the risk. Fluent form can hide an allegation that nothing on the file supports, a cause of action that does not fit the facts, or a date that has been assumed rather than found. The Civil Procedure Rules put weight on statements of case being accurate and verified, and the court is entitled to take a dim view of allegations that turn out to have no foundation.

A working method

1. Give the tool the matter papers, not a summary. The value comes from it reading the actual documents.
2. Ask factual questions first: the chronology, the contractual documents, what the correspondence says about the disputed events.
3. Decide the shape of the case yourself. Write the list of allegations, or the list of responses, in your own words.
4. Ask the tool to draft the factual narrative paragraphs against that structure, with a page reference for each fact.
5. Check every reference. Open the pages. If a reference does not support the sentence, change the sentence, not the reference.
6. Settle the legal and tactical paragraphs yourself, or send the papers to counsel with a clean chronology and an issues list.
7. Keep a note on the file of what was done with the tool and who reviewed it.

Checks before it goes out

Before anything is signed, run through the basics. Are the parties named correctly and consistently. Are the dates right against the documents. Does every allegation of fact have a source you could show the court. Is anything pleaded that the client has not confirmed. Has limitation been checked against the diary and the file, not against the tool's arithmetic alone. Is the statement of truth wording correct and has the person signing it read the whole document and been told what signing means.

If you are instructing counsel, the same preparation pays for itself. Counsel drafts faster and better from an accurate chronology and a complete bundle of the key documents than from a file and a hopeful covering letter.

Where Alesis fits

Alesis answers questions about a matter from the matter's own papers and names the page each answer came from, and if the papers do not say, it says so. When it cannot find support for a point it says what is missing instead of guessing, which is exactly what you want before an allegation goes into a statement of case. It prepares drafts for a qualified person to review and sign off; it does not file, serve or email anything. It assists qualified professionals and does not replace them, and it does not provide legal advice.