What is a digital paralegal?
A digital paralegal is software that does the repetitive work a litigation paralegal does, on every case at once, without being asked: drafting the intake paperwork, requesting and chasing records, drafting the complaint, preparing discovery responses, and keeping every matter moving. It works inside the software the firm already has. The attorney supervises it the way the rules already require for nonlawyer staff: every draft comes back for review and approval before anything leaves the firm. Some vendors use the term AI paralegal for a chat assistant that waits for a prompt. The difference is who starts the work.
What does a digital paralegal actually do?
The work that buries human paralegals, on every active case at once:
- Drafts retainers, authorizations, and intake documents the moment a call ends, and follows up until the retainer is signed
- Requests medical records on day one and chases providers for the life of the case
- Files, indexes, and summarizes records as they arrive
- Drafts letters of representation, preservation letters, and demand letters
- Drafts the summons and complaint the moment the last record lands
- Pulls discovery demands from the court’s electronic filing system and drafts the responses from the file
- Brings every draft to the attorney for approval before it goes anywhere
How is a digital paralegal different from an AI assistant?
An assistant waits. Someone has to notice the task, open the tool, type the prompt, upload the file, and carry the result to the next system, and that someone is usually the paralegal the tool was meant to help. A digital paralegal starts when the work arrives, finishes it inside the firm’s own systems, and brings the finished draft to the attorney.
The test for the label
Someone has to notice the task, open the tool, type the prompt, upload the file, and carry the result to the next system.
It starts when the work arrives, finishes it inside the firm’s own systems, and brings the finished draft to the attorney.
The test for any product that uses either label is one question: who starts, works, and finishes each task?
Is a digital paralegal there to replace my paralegals?
No. It takes the work that burns them out: the chasing, the data entry, the reminder faxes. Paralegals become reviewers of finished work, attorneys get drafts instead of blank pages, and the firm stops losing good people to the grind. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects roughly 39,300 paralegal openings a year, most of them replacing people who leave the occupation;1 the grind is the reason, and removing the grind is the point.
How is it supervised?
Exactly the way the rules already require attorneys to supervise nonlawyer staff: the attorney remains responsible for the work product.2 A well built system makes that structural rather than optional: nothing is served, filed, or sent without an attorney approving it first. That is how Execute is built, and the supervision question is treated in full in Is AI allowed under the rules of professional conduct?
What should a firm look for in one?
- It starts the work itself rather than waiting for prompts and uploads
- It works inside the software the firm already runs, with the case management system remaining the system of record
- It picks up any case at any stage without an onboarding project
- The attorney approval gate is built in, not a setting
- The firm’s work never trains another firm’s system
What does Execute do?
Execute is the digital paralegal for litigation firms: it starts the moment work comes in, works every case at once, and runs on the software the firm already has, including the firm’s AI tools, which it operates. An attorney reviews and approves everything. See the four products, or the homepage.
1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, paralegals and legal assistants: job outlook.
2. American Bar Association, Model Rule 5.3, responsibilities regarding nonlawyer assistance: rule text.
Related questions, answered the same way.
The digital paralegal starts on your caseload, not on a prompt.
Request a demo, and we’ll run Execute on a few of your real cases. You watch it work.
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