How Jubal works.

1. What Jubal is, in one minute

Jubal is a legal AI that works on your matters the way an associate would: it reads the whole file, drafts real Word documents in your firm's style, and cites what it used to the page. It runs as a desktop app (each attorney runs their own AI on their own machine) over matters your whole firm shares; a browser version at jubal.law lets anyone on the team review the same matters without installing anything.

Two places to work:

• A matter — the case workspace. Documents, threads with Jubal, work product, people, deadlines. Shared with your team.
• The Quick Desk — your private quick-work surface. Letters, memos, email drafts, summaries with no client and no matter. Private to you; a session can be moved into a matter later if it becomes real case work.

2. Getting around

The left sidebar has six destinations: Today, Quick Desk, Clients, Matters, Team, Tools, plus your account menu (Settings, sign out) at the bottom. Click blank sidebar space to collapse it to an icon rail; click again to expand.

• Today — your dashboard: deadlines this week, overdue items, open tasks, recent activity and work product across your matters.

• ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) — the command palette from anywhere: type a matter or client name to jump to it, or type a question and choose where it runs (the Quick Desk for quick/general work, or a matter thread).

• Inside a matter, the matter's own rail navigates its sections: Overview and Threads; Record (Work Products, Documents, Review); Manage (People, Tasks, Calendar); Matter (Activity, Settings).
• Text size: Settings → Appearance, or ⌘+ / ⌘− anywhere.

3. Getting started

Sign in

Open the desktop app and click Sign in — authentication happens in your browser and returns to the app by itself. The same account works at jubal.law in a browser.

Set up a new firm

A guided sign-up walks the founding user through it: firm name and profile, the data-posture acknowledgment ("never trained on, never shared"), team invites, and a hand-off into the desktop app. Minutes, not an IT project.

Join an existing firm

Two paths:

• Invited: accept the invite that was emailed to you, then sign in with that same email address. The invite is waiting when you sign in.
• Work-email match: if your email domain matches a firm already on Jubal, sign-up offers a one-click request to join. You see nothing of the firm until an owner approves the request (Firm → People).

Personal setup interview (recommended first step)

Settings → Profile → run the personal setup. Jubal interviews you for about ten minutes — structured questions, answers saved as you go — and fills your contact card (signature name, title, phone, mailing address) and your working profile. This is what makes letters come out signature-ready and drafts sound like you. Re-run it anytime from the same place.

Firm admins can also run the firm interview (Settings → Firm), which writes the firm playbook — the visible document describing how the firm practices. Jubal follows it when drafting, and proposes amendments when the firm's actual decisions drift from the written standard (a lawyer approves every change).

4. Matters

Create a matter

Matters → New matter. Name it, attach the client (or add one in the same flow). Every new matter passes a conflicts check first: client and opposing parties are screened against every other matter in the firm; a name match must be reviewed and a resolution recorded before the matter is created. Enforced on the server — it can't be clicked past.

Import your existing caseload

Sidebar → Tools → Import cases. Point Jubal at the folder on your office drive that holds your cases; it recognizes the structure (client folders containing case folders, or one folder per case), proposes a matter + client for each, and you review the whole mapping in one table before anything is created. Matters are created linked to their drive folders, so they re-sync from day one. Interrupted? Run it again — nothing uploads twice.

The matter Overview

Every matter opens on its dashboard: the vitals up top (opened date, fee arrangement, statute-of-limitations countdown when calendared, the team, what's due next), the Ask bar to start a thread immediately, and cards summarizing threads, review items, work product, dates, tasks, people, and related matters — each one click from its full page.

Matter lifecycle

The ⋯ menu in the matter header: Close (done but still writable), Archive (shelved, read-only, reversible from the Matters list), Delete (inaccessible immediately, recoverable for 30 days), and — for owners — Purge now (permanent, everywhere, for right-to-erasure; you type the matter name to confirm). Before a purge you're offered the client-file export: one click zips the entire matter — sources and work product, folders intact — for handover.

5. Asking Jubal in a matter (Threads)

• Start from the Overview's Ask bar, or Threads → type in the composer at the bottom. The first message starts a new thread, titled from your question.

• Citations: answers cite the record as [document p.N: "quote"] — click one to open the document viewer at that page. If the record doesn't support a claim, Jubal says "it's not in the record" rather than invent.

• Guided questions: when your ask is genuinely ambiguous, Jubal asks a quick multiple-choice question instead of guessing.
• Stop (the small square by Send) halts a running answer. Sending again mid-answer interrupts with your correction.
• Teammates can watch the same thread live; if someone else is driving it, your message queues and sends when their answer lands.
• Attach (the + in the composer) references documents or routes to upload.
• Threads can be renamed, archived (list hygiene — content still informs that thread's future turns), or deleted from the thread header menu.

6. Documents

Upload

Drag files or whole folders anywhere onto the Documents page. Before a big drop, Jubal shows a pre-upload summary — what's new, what's an exact duplicate (skipped), what can't be processed — and you confirm. Folder structure is kept: the Documents page shows your folders, and Jubal cites by the paths your team knows.

What happens at ingest

Every document is identified by its contents (misnamed files still ingest correctly), summarized into the matter's index, made searchable, and — where the filename is unreadable — given a suggested readable title you can apply, edit, or dismiss (the file itself never changes). Scanned and handwritten pages are read visually; photos get a searchable description; recordings are transcribed (multi-gigabyte bodycam included — oversize media extracts audio locally next time a team desktop opens the matter).

The viewer

Click any document: the side panel shows type, dates, pages, status, your designations and notes; the viewer opens PDFs and Word files with the citation panel, version History (download or restore any version — restores become new versions, the trail is never rewritten), and download.

Keep the matter current from the office drive

Matter → Documents → Re-sync from folder after linking the matter to its drive folder once (the link is per-machine). While the matter is open, one desktop on the team auto-watches the folder every few minutes — the case file stays current without anyone clicking.

Request files from a client

Documents → Request files: enter a name and email; they get a branded secure link to a drag-and-drop page (no account, files to 5 GB). Everything lands in a review queue — nothing enters the matter until an attorney accepts it, stamped with who sent it and when. Revoke the link anytime.

7. Work product

Everything Jubal drafts lands on the Work Products page, tagged by type (memo, letter, motion, chronology, packet…), newest first, and as real .docx/.pdf/.xlsx files you own — no proprietary editor.

• Edit in Word, bring it back: download, edit, and drop the edited file back on the Work Product page (or just re-sync the linked folder — downloads land in a "From Jubal" folder there and edited copies return on their own). The edit becomes a new numbered version of the same document, and Jubal studies the changes — what it learned lands in the matter's visible memory and improves the next draft.
• Review flags: every deliverable passes a delivery gate — leftover placeholders, unverified citations, completeness gaps are flagged on the document and in the thread. Nothing ships half-finished silently.
• Citations report: drafts with authorities carry a ✓/⚠/✗ citation panel — record cites checked against your documents, legal cites against the primary sources.

8. The Quick Desk (personal quick work)

Sidebar → Quick Desk. A rail of your private sessions beside a chat pane — no client, no matter, zero intake. Use it for the drafting that has no case: a recommendation letter, a school letter, a quick decline, "summarize this thing someone emailed me."

• The four tiles (Letter, Memo, Email draft, Summarize a document) drop an editable scaffold into the composer — fill in the specifics and send.
• Attach a file: drop a document anywhere onto the chat pane — or click the + in the composer — and ask about it. A lease, an insurance policy, something a client emailed: Jubal reads the file right there, with no matter and no upload ceremony. Attached files stay in your private Quick Desk.
• Letters come out on your letterhead, signature-ready (from your contact card + the firm's office address; personal letters use your personal address instead).
• Files Jubal produces are saved to your private Quick Desk automatically and survive machine loss. Everything here is draft-only — nothing is ever sent anywhere by Jubal.
• Move to matter (button in the session header): when quick work turns out to be case work, the whole session — thread and drafts — moves into a matter you pick, becomes team-visible, and its files become real matter documents. The move is recorded in the matter's audit log. Moving does not run a conflicts check — run one from the matter's People page if a new party is involved.
• Quick Desk sessions are private to you — not visible to firm admins. The firm's control is lifecycle: personal data is purged when a member is offboarded.

The Quick Desk cannot answer questions about your matters — it can't see them. Matter questions belong in the matter's threads.

9. Cite-Check (Tools)

Sidebar → Tools → Cite-Check. Drop any Word doc or PDF — yours or opposing counsel's — or paste text; every citation is verified against the primary sources (case law, U.S. Code, C.F.R., Treasury materials, and a twelve-state statute corpus — CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, IL, NC, NJ, NY, OR, SC, TX), including whether your quotes match the statutory text. Documents are read on your machine; only the citations are looked up. Unlimited on paid plans. (A free public version lives at jubal.law/citecheck.)

10. Looking things up outside the matter

Jubal can reach outside the matter for three kinds of information — each through the firm's own gateway, never from your machine directly, and every single lookup is logged so the firm can always answer "what left the building?"

• Legal authority (always available): case law (CourtListener), the Federal Register, the U.S. Code and C.F.R., and the multi-state statute corpus. Only short search terms or citations leave — never your documents or drafts. Anything cited from these is tagged with its source.
• Business addresses (always available): ask for a letter to a company and Jubal fills the recipient block — current mailing address, phone, website — from a live business directory. Only the business name and city are sent; never why you're asking. No confident match → a visible [ADDRESS NEEDED] placeholder, never a guessed address.
• The public web (only when you say so): tell Jubal to "look it up online" and it can search and read public pages. Searches go through one contracted provider via the firm's gateway; any page it reads is screened in isolation before a word of it reaches your matter; web facts are marked [web: <address>] and are never treated as legal authority. Jubal will not wander the internet on its own, and it never puts case facts into a search box you didn't ask for.

What never happens: your documents leaving in a query, silent lookups (everything is visible in the thread's step log and the firm's audit trail), or an invented address or citation when a lookup comes up empty.

11. Voice / dictation

• Every Ask surface has a mic button beside "Ask Jubal" — click to start, click to stop. While live, the input glows gold.
• Hold-to-talk anywhere: hold the dictation shortcut and speak into whatever field has focus; release to stop. A speaking panel shows your words live. With nothing focused, speak anyway — release opens the Ask box with your words ready.
• Configure the shortcut and devices in Settings → Voice ("Dictation shortcut").
• In matters, dictation is primed with the case's party names — the words generic dictation mangles.

12. Calendar, tasks, deadlines

• Matter → Calendar: month + agenda views of SOL clocks, filing deadlines, hearings, depositions. Jubal auto-seeds the SOL clock from the incident date where supported (rule cited) and can propose deadlines in chat — always added unconfirmed, each with the controlling rule, for your sign-off.
• A daily email digest surfaces what's overdue and what's due in the next week.

• Docket watcher: give a matter its docket number and Jubal checks the public docket daily; new filings arrive as proposed calendar entries.
• Matter → Tasks for open items; Today rolls tasks and deadlines up across matters.

13. Clients and people

• Sidebar → Clients: the firm's client book — individuals and organizations, matter counts, lead attorney, status, last activity. Add client is a guided flow that can open their first matter in the same step.

• Matter → People: the parties (client, opposing, counsel, judge…), the matter team, and guest access. Party details open in a slide-over.

14. Team, roles, and sharing

• Invite teammates: Team (or the Firm page) → invite by email, choosing role and seat in the same step. The invite email is matched to their sign-in address — they accept inside the app on first sign-in.
• Seats: View Only is free for the whole firm (see everything, run nothing). Working seats pick a plan — Base $25/mo, Pro $100/mo, Max $200/mo — each with a monthly work allowance, managed per seat.
• Web review: the full matter — documents, work product, live threads, calendar — opens at jubal.law in any browser. Drafting runs in the desktop app.
• Outside counsel (guests): invite co-counsel or an expert to a single matter by email — no seat, no install, no firm membership. View-only or contribute (add documents); revocable anytime; every step audit-logged. Guests watch threads live but never drive Jubal.
• Matter pools: group related matters so they share one record — each matter's Related page lists the family, and Jubal can pull from any of them while working in one. Cross-client pools require a recorded conflict review first.

15. Firm administration and billing

One Firm page (desktop Team screen or jubal.law/firm — same screens) runs people, join requests, usage, client billing, invoices, offices, and settings. One designated billing owner controls every dollar.

• Start free: a new firm gets the whole workspace — matters, uploads, organization — with no card. AI stays off until the billing owner picks a plan; the moment someone reaches for it they're pointed down the right path.
• Usage: each seat's plan includes a monthly allowance; add usage anytime (rolls over 12 months) or enable auto usage per seat — refills fire automatically under a firm-set monthly ceiling, with an email on every fire.
• Cost per matter: every matter shows its AI cost this month, broken down by activity; the billing page rolls costs up matter by matter and client by client on the firm's own billing cycle, with one-click per-client statements (print-ready or emailed).
• Checkout and card management are the only browser moments (Stripe); the app picks up the result automatically.

16. Settings

Settings (from the sidebar account menu) — tabs: Account (contact card, avatar, mailing address), Profile (personal setup interview + your working profile/playbook), Firm (firm interview, playbook — admins), Appearance (sidebar theme, text size), Voice (dictation shortcut + devices), Notifications, Security (active sessions with one-click sign-out per device or everywhere).

17. Privacy, security, feedback

• Documents are encrypted, access is matter-scoped, privilege-relevant actions are audit-logged. Client work is never trained on and never shared — the data-posture acknowledgment every firm signs.
• What Jubal learns inside a matter never leaves it; guests never see the firm's playbook.
• Feedback: rate any answer 👍/👎, or use the floating report button on any screen — optionally with a screenshot of the app window only, previewed before sending. It goes straight to the Jubal team.

18. Keyboard shortcuts

19. What Jubal does NOT do (honest edges)

• No cross-matter answers yet. "What's due this week across my cases?" isn't answerable by a thread or the Quick Desk today — Today's dashboard and the Calendar digest are the current answer. A true cross-matter agent is on the roadmap.
• The Quick Desk can't see matters, and matter threads can't see other matters (unless pooled).
• Nothing is ever sent by Jubal — emails, filings, letters are drafts for you to send.
• AI-proposed dates are never final — every one arrives unconfirmed for attorney sign-off.
• It won't invent authority — unsupported citations become visible [AUTHORITY NEEDED] placeholders, never fabricated cites.
• It won't browse the internet on its own. Web lookups run only when you direct one (§10), through the firm's gateway, logged — and web content is never used as legal authority.