How a brief decides what comes first

The checks that run

Each practice area has its own library of checks: 23 for business clients, 20 for estate planning, 14 for family law and 19 for personal injury.

A check reads the client’s tapped answers, and what the client wrote in their own words. When the answers match what a check looks for, the check becomes a note on the brief: a headline, why it may matter now, questions to ask on the call, and the documents that would settle it.

A word in the client’s own writing counts only when the client used it straight. A clause that denies the thing doesn’t raise its check: “we have never used a co-packer” raises no co-packer note.

The headline, the reasoning and the questions are library text, written once. The brief stamps every note “For you to check”: drafted text for you to test against the answers, not a conclusion.

The order they print in

Some notes jump the queue and print first, whatever their score. On a business brief, a live dispute or a deadline inside 14 days. On a family brief, a safety answer, a court date inside two weeks, or signs in the client’s own words that money has been moved. On an injury brief, a death, an injury dated a year or more back (or one the client can’t date), a government body on the other side (or possibly on the other side), an offer already on the table, a claim for a child, or evidence that may soon be lost. Estate briefs have no jump: the same kinds of fact carry the highest numbers in that library instead. A plan being arranged for someone else, where the client’s words raise a question about pressure or about whether that person can decide freely, carries the highest number in the estate library.

Every other note is scored, and the scores set the order. The score starts with the check’s rank: a fixed number written into its library. Most ranks never move. A few rise when the client’s own words state the sharper fact. The check for work a creator hasn’t signed over ranks 120, and 165 when the client’s story says someone hasn’t signed.

A note backed by the client’s own written words scores 8 more than one raised by tapped answers alone.

A note scores 60 less when everything behind it is an uncertain answer — a “Not sure”, a “Partly / uncertain” — and none of the client’s own words back it. A settled answer outranks a guess. Safety and deadline notes are never marked down this way.

The first three notes in order print as full notes: the queue-jumping notes first, then the highest scores. The next two print as one-line “Also check” entries, headline only. If fewer than three checks match, fewer notes print. On an injury brief, more than three notes can jump the queue; the fourth and fifth then print as one-line entries, and any after that don’t print. The rest don’t print either, but the brief shows every answer the client gave, so what those checks read is still in front of you. Two notes with the same score print in the order their checks sit in the library.

The sample brief is a made-up business client. You can open it from the demo page and check every number above against it.

Who wrote the checks

Jake Silverstein wrote them. He founded Tellbrief and built it, and the four libraries are part of the product: fixed questions, fixed text, fixed numbers.

No firm can edit a check, and no client’s answers can change one. The same answers always produce the same brief, in the same order.

Each library carries a version, and the version that built a brief is recorded with the brief. The business library is on its third version; the estate, family and injury libraries are on their first. A library changes only when Tellbrief releases a new version of the product.

Checking a ranking you think is wrong

Start under the note. The brief prints the client’s own sentences that raised it, word for word, under the heading “In the client’s words”. When the client didn’t write about it, the brief prints the answers that raised it instead, question and answer together.

Then read the rest of the brief. It carries every answer the client gave. The “Also check” lines print no evidence of their own; the answers behind them are in the brief.

Then run the rules on this page over those answers: queue jump first, then the scores. The brief doesn’t print the scores themselves. If a note is there, a check matched the answers in front of you. If you can’t find the match anywhere in the answers, the brief has a defect.

After the call, mark the note. On the brief you can record a verdict for each issue — “Sooner than I would have”, “I’d have raised it anyway” or “Not relevant here”. Tellbrief counts those verdicts issue by issue, so a check that keeps missing shows up in the count.

What the ranking does not promise

Everything above describes how a brief is built. It does not say the brief is complete, and it does not say the first issue is the legally right one.

A check can only match the answers a client gave. What a client leaves out stays out. The ranks are a judgement made in advance, for cases in general; they are not a reading of this client’s case. Your judgement is. That is why every note is stamped “For you to check”.