In one sentence
Pick a document in a case file and SmartLegalPro shows you which facts only entered with it, which earlier entries it replaced — and how the facts would read if it had never arrived.
The problem every firm knows
An exhibit is uploaded, the analysis runs, the facts shift. A few days later it turns out: wrong document, wrong case, or the client submits a corrected version. You delete the exhibit — and face the real question: what actually depended on it? Which entries came only from this document? Which earlier findings had it overwritten? Does what applied before apply again now?
In most systems that cannot be answered. The facts are a text field that gets overwritten. Whatever stood there before is gone.
Why we can answer it precisely
With us the facts are not running text but a network of individual entries — and each of those entries carries its origin: it knows which document it was extracted from. When a later document corrects an earlier entry, the old one is not deleted but stamped with the point in time from which it no longer applied.
From these two properties the facts can be reconstructed along two independent axes:
- Time: "this is how the file stood when the claim was filed."
- Document: "this is how the file would stand without the rejoinder — but with everything else as of today."
Both can be combined. And both are a pure evaluation of existing data: no AI call, no quota consumed, no waiting.
The difference between the two axes
That may sound like the same thing, but it is not — and the difference decides whether it is useful. A reference date discards everything received since. If three further documents arrived between the exhibit in question and today, they vanish too. The document axis, by contrast, removes only that one document and leaves everything else at its current state.
For the question "what did this exhibit change", the document axis is therefore the right one — and it is the part a pure timeline cannot deliver in principle.
Reviving rather than leaving a gap
One detail makes the professional difference: if the excluded exhibit had corrected an earlier entry, hiding the new value is not enough. There would then be nothing in that place — and that would simply be wrong. Instead, the original entry comes back to life and is labelled as such.
In the example: the statement of claim names a purchase price of €10,000, the rejoinder corrects it to €12,000. Think the rejoinder away and the view shows €10,000 again — not a blank.
Three views per case file
The new "History" tab in every case file offers:
- Impact — what this document introduced, what it superseded (each as "old value → new value" with its source), which open contradictions it is involved in, and which links rely on it.
- With / without — both versions of the facts side by side, dropped facts in red, revived facts in green.
- Point in time — the state at an earlier date, freely combinable with the document exclusion.
None of this changes the case file. The document stays until you actually move it to the trash — and even then the derived facts and evidence can be fully recovered on restore, including their original review status.
The assistant can put it into words
Because the origin is stored, the AI assistant can directly answer questions such as "What did the rejoinder change in the facts?" and name the responsible document. The agents and the negotiation simulation Lex & Lexi draw on the same basis — entries that have since been superseded or that you discarded no longer feed into their reasoning.
And the summary itself
In addition, every case file keeps a version history of the AI case summary. Any earlier version can be brought back with one click; the current one automatically moves into the history and is not lost. If you remove a document that the summary still describes, the case file says so explicitly — instead of leaving a text standing that describes an exhibit which no longer exists.
Honest about the limits
The evaluation is only as good as the extraction it rests on: it reliably shows which recorded facts depend on a document. Contributions of a document that were never recorded as a fact cannot be shown. The comparison is an analysis tool for your review — not an automatic decision about what belongs in the pleading.
