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Methodology
BenchPath's value is only as good as its discipline. These are the exact definitions behind the labels on every card, and the substantiation behind every public claim. If a claim isn't true, it doesn't ship — enforced by an automated release lint.
A document or page published by the court, clerk, or a judicial officer themselves — an administrative order, a division-instructions page, a judge's practice-preferences PDF, a printable directory. Not a secondary summary, not model knowledge, not a search snippet.
Set only after a live fetch of the official source, with the excerpt traced to the fetched text and a last-verified date recorded. Anything seeded from model knowledge sits at medium confidence with an open review task until it is live-verified.
The document behind a published rule is fetched, hashed (SHA-256), and the bytes are preserved in the repository so the quoted requirement can be reproduced from the exact source. This applies to the ingested procedure corpus, not to every registered source. The hourly monitoring pipeline detects change rather than archiving every page.
Two distinct things, labeled distinctly: (1) rule cards are reviewed before publishing as verified, with reviewer provenance shown; (2) any judicial-tendency synthesis is additionally review-gated — it publishes only with methodology, support count, and sources attached, after a human sign-off. Deterministic source rows (e.g. a quoted page limit) are QA-sampled, not individually re-adjudicated.
high = live-verified against the official source; medium = drawn from model knowledge or a secondary source, with an open review task; unverified = a known gap held as a placeholder, never presented as an answer. Every card shows its level and date.
The production monitor fetches each approved source on an hourly schedule, hashes a normalized copy, ledgers the observation, and flags changes for human review — a hash change never publishes anything by itself. When a controlling statewide rule supersedes a local one, affected records retain history and link to the controlling authority. Rescission or vacatur claims require a fresh primary-source verification.
Every material public claim, its substantiation, and whether it is shipped or planned. Counts render live from the database. Registry version 2026-09-05.1.
Florida's 20 circuits and 67 counties are mapped; published rule cards render their recorded official source.
LiveBasis: Circuit, county, published-rule, and source totals are computed from current database rows. Per-judge depth is disclosed separately. The Florida home strip is state-pinned (getStateStats("FL"): circuits, counties, published rules, judges, registered and healthy sources) as of 2026-09-03; /coverage keeps the labeled platform-wide totals.
Last verified: computed at request or cache refresh · Computation: src/lib/data.ts#getStats; src/lib/data.ts#getCoverage
Owner: data-operations · Refresh: runtime · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
home hero, /coverage, directories, SEO and LLM summaries
Published rule cards render the recorded citation, official link, confidence, and last-verified date.
LiveBasis: The rule query and presentation component carry these fields; publication quality is independently governed by the reliance and review gates.
Last verified: computed at request or cache refresh · Computation: src/lib/data.ts#RULE_LIST_SELECT; src/components/RuleCard.tsx
Owner: product-trust · Refresh: runtime · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
rule cards, checklists, API, exports, methodology
Published judicial officers of the live states in the directory (count rendered live).
LiveBasis: getStats().judges counts published judge rows. It is a roster count, not a rulings-corpus count. The emailed report (NP-A2) names one published judge re-derived from the database by slug. Home page tiles are Florida-pinned via getStateStats("FL") (owner order 2026-09-03: the Florida home carries Florida numbers only, as /texas carries Texas numbers); the platform-wide total renders on /coverage under its own label.
Last verified: computed at request or cache refresh · Computation: src/lib/data.ts#getStats
Owner: data-operations · Refresh: runtime · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
home stats, /intelligence, /coverage, judge directory, emailed report delivery
A rulings corpus adds evidence beyond written opinions; coverage is incomplete and disclosed per report.
Rolling outBasis: Verified judge_rulings plus the CourtListener connector. Counts vary by judge; tendency claims remain review- and audience-gated.
Last verified: computed at request or cache refresh · Computation: src/lib/data.ts#getJudgeReport; src/lib/judicial-claims.ts
Owner: judicial-intelligence · Refresh: runtime · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/intelligence, judge reports, professional comparison
Analytical skills are badged by their recorded maturity: live, review-gated, or pipeline.
LiveBasis: The intel_skills registry supplies status; a registry row does not by itself prove an end-to-end AI capability.
Last verified: computed at request or cache refresh · Computation: src/lib/data.ts#getIntelSkills
Owner: judicial-intelligence · Refresh: runtime · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional
/intelligence, methodology
Hourly source monitoring by an authenticated Edge Function maintains hashed change records and opens review tasks for human adjudication; saved follows record interest in a source, and automated alert delivery activates only when its production delivery gates are evidenced.
LiveBasis: Production monitoring runs on the hourly pg_cron schedule with secret-gated invocation, per-host politeness, and one ledgered observation per fetch (private.source_monitor_observations, re-verified 2026-09-02). A hash change never publishes anything: it files a review task for a human. Automated email delivery remains gated (see email-alerts).
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: supabase/functions/monitor-sources/index.ts
Owner: source-integrity · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
home, /sources, alerts, operational documentation
Reliance-bearing rules and judicial synthesis require recorded review before verified publication.
LiveBasis: Database review state and resolver functions gate reliance output; judicial claims must also pass citation, support, and audience validation.
Last verified: 2026-08-06 · Computation: src/app/admin/review/page.tsx
Owner: product-trust · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
home, /intelligence, /methodology, reviewer and report surfaces
Matter packet exports ship only behind server-authorized evidence gates and are not yet available.
Rolling outBasis: CSV and ICS packet serializers seal a bounded reviewed packet. They do not calculate a due date; generic pages can still use browser print-to-PDF.
Last verified: 2026-08-06 · Computation: src/lib/server/feature-flags.ts
Owner: professional-workflow · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: verified_professional, developer
professional matter exports, /pricing, documentation
A durable paralegal matter-task workflow ships only behind server-authorized packet-evidence gates and is not yet available; team access today is limited to shared firm accounts.
Rolling outBasis: The service-only workflow RPCs bind every mutation to the caller, current membership and packet evidence; private forced-RLS relations, immutable same-task receipts, revocation triggers and exact export DTOs fail closed when that authority changes.
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: src/lib/server/feature-flags.ts
Owner: professional-workflow · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: verified_professional, developer
authenticated professional matter operations, private APIs and operational documentation
Firm, enterprise, SSO, API, and white-label capabilities must be labeled by their deployment state and cannot be represented as active from UI copy alone.
Rolling outBasis: Repository foundations exist, but each externally dependent capability remains behind activation evidence and exact authorization controls.
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: src/app/firms/page.tsx; src/app/pricing/page.tsx; src/lib/server/activation-policy.ts
Owner: growth-enterprise · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: verified_professional, developer
/firms, /pricing, /developers, enterprise and API documentation
In-app change alerts exist; automated email delivery is not represented as active until provider and monitoring gates are evidenced.
Rolling outBasis: Follows and recorded in-app alerts exist. Automated delivery and practice-group routing require external activation evidence.
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: src/app/alerts/page.tsx; src/lib/data.ts
Owner: source-integrity · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional
/alerts, /pricing, /firms, email documentation
Security and privacy statements describe implemented controls and evidence boundaries, not a guarantee of security or regulatory certification.
LiveBasis: Control statements are tied to repository configuration, tests, and evidence requirements; unsupported certification and absolute-safety language is prohibited.
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: SECURITY.md; src/app/security/page.tsx; tests/security
Owner: security-privacy · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
security, privacy, accessibility, API, email and operational documentation
Consumer and pro-se surfaces provide sourced procedural information, options, checklists, and deadlines without selecting a remedy, argument, or judge-specific strategy and without predicting an outcome.
LiveBasis: Audience gates, claims lint, and judicial-claim controls separate general procedural information from verified-professional work product.
Last verified: 2026-08-05 · Computation: src/lib/judicial-claims.ts; scripts/claims-lint.mjs; docs/upl/FL-BENCH-DOCTRINE.md
Owner: legal-product · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, developer
public and pro-se UI, public API, SEO, LLM and email
Verified attorneys and authorized firm users may use full source-backed evidence, alternatives, counterarguments, and judge- or division-specific procedural strategy support only with citations, confidence, gaps, and explicit attorney confirmation.
Rolling outBasis: Professional authority is server-verified; the attorney remains responsible for strategy and must affirm human review before downstream reliance or redistribution.
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: src/lib/judicial-claims.ts; docs/upl/FL-BENCH-DOCTRINE.md
Owner: legal-product · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: verified_professional, developer
verified-professional reports, workbench, API and exports
Prices, limits, credits, subscriptions, refunds, and availability are rendered only from the current commercial contract or explicitly labeled policy text.
LiveBasis: The versioned commercial policy, exact checkout consent, attested provider catalog, immutable database receipt and provider-gated commerce code are the sources for current commercial statements; new-sale activation remains fail-closed and separate from lifecycle processing.
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: src/lib/billing.ts; src/app/pricing/page.tsx; src/app/terms/page.tsx
Owner: billing-operations · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
pricing, checkout review, terms, referrals, authenticated receipts, and professional-API limit responses
Public API rule, judge, county, and state resources carry versioned object-level provenance receipts; remaining route families adopt the contract as they are upgraded, and downstream derivative use must acknowledge that contract and preserve its evidence fields.
LiveBasis: The response boundary validates source URL, locator, version, SHA-256 projection receipt, confidence, verification time, correction/retraction/suppression state, audience, disclaimer, and coverage before returning a success response.
Last verified: 2026-08-06 · Computation: src/lib/api.ts; src/lib/api-provenance.ts
Owner: api-platform · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
public and professional API, exports, developer documentation
Published records expose a public correction path with expedited handling for court chambers; response-time targets are service objectives rather than guarantees.
LiveBasis: The corrections intake surface and review workflow are live; machine-readable correction, retraction, and suppression state ships with the corrections-governance slice and is not claimed until its evidence lands.
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: src/app/corrections/page.tsx
Owner: product-trust · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/corrections, methodology, API, exports, security and operational documentation
Checklist requests with unresolved scope are rejected rather than widened to all of Florida; matter-packet applicability and deadline computation are undergoing verification hardening before any reliance-grade claim is made for them.
LiveBasis: The checklist API fails closed on unresolved county, case-type, and motion slugs server-side; the typed applicability and deadline-evidence engines ship in their own verified slices and are not claimed until their evidence lands.
Last verified: 2026-09-05 · Computation: src/lib/data.ts; src/app/api/v1/checklists/generate/route.ts
Owner: professional-workflow · Refresh: every 30 days or sooner · Audiences: verified_professional, developer
matter, preflight, assistant, report, checklist, pricing, API and operational documentation
Support, vulnerability disclosure, governing-law, provider-sharing, and account policies are binding only as stated on their current policy surface; response targets are not guarantees.
LiveBasis: Each policy is versioned in repository source, dated where material, and separated from capability or certification claims.
Last verified: 2026-08-05 · Computation: SUPPORT.md; SECURITY.md; src/app/privacy/page.tsx; src/app/terms/page.tsx
Owner: legal-operations · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
support, security, privacy, terms, accessibility, email and operational documentation
Material product claims are registered with an owner, evidence, freshness policy, audience, and allowed surfaces; release lint withholds stale, planned, unregistered, and wrong-surface copy.
LiveBasis: The versioned registry and release scanner validate current evidence references and inventory live UI, API, SEO, LLM, email, and documentation surfaces.
Last verified: 2026-08-05 · Computation: config/product-claims.registry.json; scripts/claims-lint.mjs; tests/jibench/claims-registry.test.ts
Owner: product-trust · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
methodology, CI, release evidence and product-truth documentation
The public changelog is a dated historical record; current availability and counts must still be resolved through live gates and current data.
LiveBasis: Historical entries are date-scoped and do not override current activation, coverage, or source-freshness controls.
Last verified: 2026-08-05 · Computation: src/app/changelog/page.tsx; docs/PROJECT-STATE-2026-08-05-SESSION-CLOSE.md
Owner: release-engineering · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/changelog and release documentation
Most of BenchPath is usable with no account and no personal data; the privacy page states what is collected, why, and for how long.
LiveBasis: Public pages read published data anonymously; account features collect only the fields the privacy page enumerates.
Last verified: 2026-08-06 · Computation: src/app/privacy/page.tsx
Owner: legal-operations · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/privacy, SEO and LLM summaries
The documented v1 routes are the same routes the product itself calls; there is no partner-only tier.
LiveBasis: The public site renders from the same v1 route handlers the documentation describes.
Last verified: 2026-08-06 · Computation: src/lib/api-docs.ts; src/app/developers/page.tsx
Owner: api-platform · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/developers and API documentation
The multi-state architecture is live behind a states-row activation; a new state launches only when its source registry meets the Florida standard.
LiveBasis: The /[state] taxonomy, DB-driven switcher, and hard-404 for unknown states are shipped; activation is a data operation.
Last verified: 2026-08-06 · Computation: src/components/StateSwitcher.tsx; src/app/roadmap/page.tsx
Owner: data-operations · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/roadmap and expansion documentation
Professional access is granted on a sworn, scrolled credential attestation recorded in an immutable receipt; internal compliance checks reference official public records, and paid professional memberships that fail requested verification are subject to cancellation and a disclosed non-refundable fee.
LiveBasis: Attestation decision in submit_professional_verification_v1 (attestation-only form 20260814151657, owner ruling 2026-08-14): the scrolled v3 agreement (2026-09-03: names The Florida Bar and the State Bar of Texas; the applicant selects the bar, recorded as bar_state on the receipt and profile; the Florida Registered Paralegal role is Florida-only) + credential shape grant access; the platform performs no automatic directory lookup at submission (the receipt records the not_performed posture with honest NULLs). Internal compliance is owner-driven: every submission emails the full attestation trail for follow-up, which may include manual checks of submitted credentials against official public records and a demand to complete identity or credential verification. The $499.99 fee is disclosed on /pricing, in Terms section 8, and in the scrolled agreement itself before any payment exists. Owner approval 2026-09-03: the attestation stands for twelve months (predicate window in migration 20260903184847_professional_attestation_term_v1.sql); the account and verification pages name the date it stands through; reminders go to the account's own address at 30, 7 and 0 days through the CRON_SECRET-gated /api/account/attestation-renewals route (service-only RPCs list_attestation_renewals_v1 and mark_attestation_renewal_notice_v1); renewal is the same sworn submission again, which stamps a new bar_verified_at.
Last verified: 2026-09-03 · Computation: src/app/api/professional/verify/route.ts; supabase/migrations/20260814151657_professional_verification_attestation_only_v1.sql#submit_professional_verification_v1; supabase/migrations/20260903184847_professional_attestation_term_v1.sql#is_attested_professional_for_user; src/app/api/account/attestation-renewals/route.ts
Owner: platform-security · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: verified_professional, consumer_procedural
/professional/verify page and flow, /firms CTA, workbench access gate
A verified appellate case-law corpus is held in custody from the courts' own publications, with hash receipts, quoted attribution lines, and live public counts; every opinion carries a verified case-type classification (evidence-receipted links; an opinion can carry its class plus specific subtypes), and per-judge outcome censuses render only at or above the small-sample floor.
LiveBasis: appellate_opinions and opinion_attributions rows with sha-256 custody; corpus_public_stats_v2 computes the public counts at request time with predicates mirroring the anon RLS view (opinions, attributions, census eligibility, classified opinions, classification links); the classification-completeness sentence renders ONLY while classified_opinions equals opinions_total (self-guarding condition in both surfaces); classification links are always labeled as links, never presented as an opinion count; census floor >= 5 matched attributions; dispositions are the appellate courts' own labels, shown as counts, never rates or predictions.
Last verified: computed at request or cache refresh · Computation: src/lib/data.ts#getCorpusPublicStats; supabase/migrations/20260814173603_corpus_public_stats_v2.sql#corpus_public_stats_v2; supabase/migrations/20260810205120_corpus_public_stats_v1.sql#corpus_public_stats_v1
Owner: data-operations · Refresh: runtime · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/intelligence, home, dossiers, coverage, SEO and LLM summaries
The Professional Workbench provides curated reasoning and dual-AI decision support over the verified corpus for attested Florida and Texas attorneys and their supervised staff only; access requires the sworn professional attestation (the single professional tier), an active entitlement, and explicit attorney confirmation, and the workbench degrades to curated-only output with the reason shown when an AI engine is unavailable.
LiveBasis: Server-enforced professional authority, entitlement, confirmation, idempotency, and AI-usage leases; hash-bound activation records; out-of-corpus statements are deleted before output; immutable receipts are stored per analysis. UPL fix program Phase 2 (2026-09-03): one authority predicate (private.is_attested_professional_for_user) behind every professional surface; the strict bar-status predicate that no code path ever satisfied is retired to an alias.
Last verified: computed at request or cache refresh · Computation: src/lib/professional-workbench.ts; src/app/matters/[id]/reasoning/page.tsx
Owner: product-trust · Refresh: runtime · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional
pricing, /intelligence, firms, home (gated marketing copy)
BenchPath's covered Texas counties carry live county- and court-level AI filing regimes, tracked verbatim and read live from the verified corpus — including Grayson (Local Rule 1.13), Rockwall (the June 22, 2026 sworn-disclosure standing order), Collin (CCL Standing Order No. 3 plus the district Local Rules of Practice's accuracy-verification provision), Dallas (County Court at Law No. 4's standing order), Montgomery (court-level generative-AI standing orders), and the shared 21st/335th district order registered by Bastrop, Burleson, and Lee — while the covered Houston-region counties (Harris, Fort Bend, Galveston, Brazoria, Matagorda, Wharton) have no AI-specific instrument on record as of the 2026-08-25 registry sweep; dozens of non-covered Texas counties have registered AI orders since 2023.
LiveBasis: Every named regime is a published rule composed verbatim from custody bytes at its unit close (AJR-1 2026-08-28 under docs/handoff/tx/ajr1/; AJR-2 2026-08-29 under docs/handoff/tx/ajr2/), and the tracker page reads the complete tracked list live from the corpus via getAiRulesTracker('TX') — a newly published covered-county AI rule surfaces without editing this claim, and the claim text is deliberately count-free so publishes never stale it (the 2026-08-29 'four regimes' enumeration went stale within a day; re-based 2026-08-31). The Houston-region zero rests on the composition-pass sweep over all 2,537 covered-county custody documents plus a title-level pass over all 594 current TOPICs feed registrations for those six counties (2026-08-25, receipts in docs/handoff/tx/ajr11-region-close/: ai-order-negative-baseline.json + feed-ai-hits-2026-08-25.json, feed sha recorded); the AJR-2 composition passes swept their own custody the same way (negative receipts in the unit packets). The statewide 'dozens' floor is read from the dated feed extract (41 AI-titled registrations at 2026-08-25). The TOPICs feed source is monitored on a 7-day cadence; a new in-region registration surfaces for review and this claim's dated parts must be re-verified before restatement.
Last verified: 2026-08-31 · Computation: src/lib/data.ts#getAiRulesTracker; docs/handoff/tx/ajr11-region-close/ai-order-negative-baseline.json; docs/handoff/tx/ajr11-region-close/feed-ai-hits-2026-08-25.json; docs/handoff/tx/ajr1/grayson/README.md; docs/handoff/tx/ajr1/rockwall/README.md; docs/handoff/tx/ajr1/collin/README.md; docs/handoff/tx/ajr1/dallas/README.md; docs/handoff/tx/ajr2/montgomery/README.md; docs/handoff/tx/ajr2/quad/README.md
Owner: data-operations · Refresh: every 45 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/texas/ai-rules (active-state-gated), its SEO metadata
Google Scholar's free case-law index and Cited-by citator are offered as an OUTBOUND cross-check only: BenchPath builds deep links that open in the visitor's own browser and never fetches, proxies, or ingests Scholar content (no API exists and Google's terms bar automated access), so no Scholar material ever reaches the corpus or the analysis engines.
LiveBasis: src/lib/scholar.ts contains only URL builders (the unit contract pins that no fetch exists in the module); the as_sdt=2006 case-law landing was live-verified in a real browser 2026-09-01; jurisdiction narrowing is deliberately left to Scholar's own Select-courts dialog because its court bitmask is undocumented; the analysis engines receive only CourtListener findings and BenchPath's own hash-receipted corpus rows.
Last verified: 2026-09-01 · Computation: src/lib/scholar.ts#scholarCaseLawUrl; tests/unit/scholar-links.test.ts
Owner: data-operations · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
/intelligence connectors card; Cited-by links on Live-Scan and case-law result rows
Two Florida clerks (Broward and Miami-Dade) sell programmatic docket access and no Florida clerk offers a free API; BenchPath's docket connectors read only those two official APIs for a matter's own case number, stay dormant until each clerk's agreement and key are recorded, and every other county links to its clerk's own case search — docket pulls are free for every signed-in account and never create a deadline.
LiveBasis: The independent survey of all 67 Florida clerks read from their own sites on 2026-09-02 (docs/handoff/docket/FL-CLERK-ACCESS-SURVEY-2026-09-02.md, raw crawl beside it) and the registry as executable law in src/lib/docket/clerks.ts (connector state, terms block, unit costs, key law); the free-lane and no-deadline rules are docs/DOCKET-LAYER-PLAN.md §2 and §6.
Last verified: 2026-09-02 · Computation: src/lib/docket/clerks.ts; src/lib/docket/clerk-viewers.ts; docs/handoff/docket/FL-CLERK-ACCESS-SURVEY-2026-09-02.md
Owner: data-operations · Refresh: every 90 days or sooner · Audiences: consumer_procedural, verified_professional, developer
matter workspace docket panel, /pricing public tier, /intelligence connectors, the docket-layer plan and survey documentation
Found something wrong? Our corrections process has an expedited lane for judges, chambers, and clerks. See live totals on the coverage page.