Meet BenchSim, a legal tech company that now provides video simulations of AI judges so that you can test out your courtroom prowess. Or, as they put it ‘BenchSim is an AI-powered oral argument simulation: unlimited reps, real judicial pressure, on your schedule’.
It’s the brainchild of Chris Ryan, a litigation partner at Taft, Stettinius & Hollister.
We have already seen companies such as Alta Claro offer deposition simulators, and others providing M&A deal simulators. But, now here is one for facing judges. Initially it was text and audio-based, and now by using the latest AI developments it’s got video engagement as well.
How the main product works:
‘Upload your briefs – Upload the briefs relevant to your oral argument. BenchSim reads the record and conducts the oral argument accordingly.
‘Choose your bench – Three judicial temperaments — hot, quiet, or neutral — drawn from both trial and appellate court styles. Each presses you differently.
‘Receive your debrief – A structured critique with strengths, weaknesses, key moments, and a 0–100 score. Know exactly where the argument held and where it slipped.’
And: ‘You can upload up to 5 documents per session, with each file up to 20 MB. Documents are processed by our AI extraction service to produce a brief case digest for the judge. The original document is not retained on BenchSim’s servers.’
‘When you upload a document, our AI extraction service reads it briefly to generate a short case digest of 400 to 750 words capturing the key facts, parties, and legal issues. The original document is deleted from our temporary storage within seconds of extraction. The digest is held only in your browser during your session and is never written to our database. Closing the session ends its existence on our systems.’
‘We recommend including the motion or brief on the issue being argued, along with any response or reply briefs, for the most effective simulation.’
They also added that: ‘You can use it to practice appellate advocacy. Our AI Judges are designed to engage with complex legal arguments regardless of the court level.’
And, as noted, there are a choice of judges.
Is this a big deal?
Well, it makes total sense. Lawyers can always benefit from dry runs, or testing out ideas and arguments, as well as dealing with different legal personas – in this case judges. And it’s potentially useful for junior lawyers to learn quickly when there isn’t a billable case to work on – not that a newbie lawyer would be in front of a judge that often, but still, it helps them to understand how things can play out in a real matter.
AL would like to see this based on real judges – if that were allowed. Although, once you do that would some courts be tempted to just use the AI judges on real cases once the human judges had been AI-modelled? Maybe not yet….but one day…?
More here.
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Two Major Legal Innovators Conferences this November
Come and join us in New York and London this November at Legal Innovators!
Legal Innovators UK – London, Nov 4 and 5
And, then Legal Innovators New York – Nov 17 and 18.
After another fantastic Legal Innovators California, where we had speakers from OpenAI, Y Combinator, Google, Meta, and many more pioneering organisations; and our stellar inaugural event in Paris this June, we are now looking forward to the landmark conferences in London and New York, both in November, and both across two days: Law Firm Day, and Inhouse Day.
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