Clearbrief Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

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 describes its technology as an algorithm and AI system that assesses how well a sentence is supported by a source document. Earlier descriptions emphasized natural-language processing, while the company does not publish a named foundation model, model version, context window, or public API specification. Current security messaging says Clearbrief is SOC 2 Type II certified, supports bring-your-own storage, and never uses customer data to train large language models. New for 2025, Clearbrief AI Academy provides three online 45-minute sessions, hands-on exercises, and certification. The American Arbitration Association expanded access to its panel in early 2025 with training, office hours, and Academy sessions. Prospective buyers should ask how support scores are produced, what human review is expected, and how retained data is governed.

Clearbrief’s home page lists Solo at $300 per month. Enterprise Unlimited pricing is custom, and the page says that plan includes one-to-one training. The law-student page advertises free access for law students, while eligibility terms and usage limits are not published. Microsoft AppSource says continued use after a free trial requires a subscription. Clearbrief does not publish document, user, storage, or AI-run quotas, and it does not list API pricing. The public pricing therefore gives buyers a starting point but not a complete cost model for larger teams. Firms should obtain written details on seats, repositories, onboarding, storage, support, renewal terms, and any limits that could affect high-volume briefing or multi-matter use.

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.