Clearbrief vs Relativity aiR: pricing, features and which to choose

Clearbrief is a Seattle legal technology company founded by litigator Jacqueline Schafer in 2020. Its core product runs inside Microsoft Word and helps lawyers draft, check, and cite litigation writing against discovery, transcripts, and other source documents. The company announced $1.2 million in 2021 and an additional approximately $4 million round in 2024, bringing reported total funding to about $8 million. Clearbrief says its users include AmLaw 200 firms, boutiques, courts, government agencies, arbitrators, and in-house legal teams. The product targets evidence-heavy litigation writing rather than general legal chat. Its central value is keeping the connection between a factual statement and its supporting document visible during drafting and review. That positioning makes source traceability the primary buying criterion, rather than breadth of research coverage.

A typical Clearbrief workflow begins with a Word pleading or brief and a connected document collection. The add-in can surface relevant discovery and transcript pages as a lawyer writes, suggest support for a sentence, and insert citations or hyperlinks. Other workflows create hyperlinked timelines, fact sections, exhibits, and tables of authorities. Lawyers can also review an opposing brief for unsupported or weakly supported assertions. Listed integrations include Relativity, iManage, NetDocuments, Clio, MyCase, Fastcase, vLex, and CanLII. Clearbrief also offers web-based courtesy copies that let readers inspect a filing alongside its supporting material. The workflow keeps drafting, source review, and citation handling in one Word-centered process. Teams should test repository permissions and document organization before assuming every matter will import cleanly.

Clearbrief does not offer a documented public API or self-hosted package, and its terms prohibit programmatic access outside the service. Briefpoint is a closer fit for written-discovery automation, while Vincent by vLex offers broader research and litigation workflows with cited legal sources, and CoCounsel Legal verifies citations in Word against Westlaw and KeyCite. Clearbrief’s narrower focus can help teams that need factual assertions tied to discovery and transcripts, but it is less suitable for general legal research or low-cost solo use. Buyers should also review current privacy and contract terms because the privacy policy dates from January 2021. Clearbrief is strongest when the final document must show disciplined factual support; buyers prioritizing legal research breadth or automated discovery responses should evaluate specialized alternatives first. Litigators who value citation-grounded writing inside Word should pick Clearbrief.

Relativity aiR is Relativity's generative AI suite for legal data intelligence inside RelativityOne. It targets litigation, investigations, document review, privilege work, and case preparation. Relativity announced limited availability for aiR for Review at Legalweek 2024, followed by general availability for Review in September 2024 and Privilege in November 2024. The company reported more than 100 million aiR document decisions during the 20 months ending in October 2025. Relativity also reported $160 million in research and development investment for 2025, a company wide figure rather than an aiR budget. The suite is designed for legal teams that need review controls, auditability, and AI assistance within an existing case data system. Its positioning therefore emphasizes controlled deployment within established litigation workflows rather than replacement of attorneys or outside counsel.

Relativity aiR begins with extracted text and images in a RelativityOne workspace. In aiR for Review, a user writes natural language criteria, tests prompts on a smaller subset, and analyzes a collection. Results identify significant documents, explain their relevance, and cite supporting passages. Privilege analyzes documents and relevant personas, predicts privilege, and drafts privilege log descriptions. Case Strategy supports fact extraction, timelines, summaries, and work product. Assist provides conversational search over legal data. Outputs include rationales and considerations, while Review Center can calculate precision, recall, and elusion metrics for quality control. These controls make the system more suitable for defensible review than a general purpose chatbot operating outside the matter workspace. They also give review leaders a structured basis for sampling, escalation, and documenting decisions before production.

The main limitation is that aiR depends on RelativityOne, which makes it less suitable for teams choosing a standalone review system. Inference may occur outside the instance storage region when Azure model availability requires it, although Relativity says customer data is not used to train third party models. Everlaw offers a separate cloud discovery platform with comparable AI review workflows, while DISCO focuses on cloud discovery and case preparation without requiring RelativityOne. Clearbrief focuses on cited drafting and discovery-related writing, and Briefpoint supports automated legal drafting as an add-on product. Westlaw Precision is aimed at legal research rather than matter data. Choose aiR when review, privilege, validation, and case intelligence should remain in one RelativityOne workspace. Confirm regional processing, contract scope, and migration costs before standardizing on it.