Brief Bank

The New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (NJOPD), in collaboration with Princeton University and the state's Office of Innovation, is developing an “AI Brief Bank” to support defenders in drafting motions and briefs more efficiently. The system combines a repository of defender-authored filings (briefs, motions, memoranda, and related documents) with AI-enabled search and summarization. Attorneys can locate analogous fact patterns, extract the governing rules and standards of review, and use structured prompts to generate a first-pass draft that they then edit and adapt to the case record.

The tool is designed for day-to-day litigation tasks. By accelerating retrieval and initial drafting, the brief bank aims to let defenders focus more time on tailoring arguments to the facts and strategy.

Operationally, the system emphasizes defender control and provenance. Drafts are treated as starting points, not final work product. Retrieved authorities remain citation-forward (pointing back to source text), and attorneys can inspect passages in context before adopting them. Over time, approved filings can be re-ingested to enrich the corpus, improving coverage for recurring issues and emerging doctrines. Governance features—access controls, logging, and redaction checks—support ethical and confidential use in a public defense environment.

As a first-of-its-kind deployment for a statewide defender office, the brief bank’s goals are straightforward: reduce repetitive drafting, improve consistency in how standards and arguments are presented, and help attorneys be better prepared under tight timelines. The expected outcome is not to replace legal judgment, but to provide faster access to relevant exemplars and authorities so that defenders can concentrate on case-specific analysis, client counseling, and advocacy.