FAQ

General#

Is 8rney legal advice?

No. 8rney is a legal research and drafting workspace. It helps your team work faster and more consistently, but all final judgment, advice, and sign-off remain with qualified human lawyers. Do not share 8rney outputs directly with clients as legal advice without a lawyer reviewing them first.

Which AI models does 8rney use?

8rney supports three providers: GPT-5.5 (Azure OpenAI, the default), Claude Sonnet 4.6 (AWS Bedrock), and Claude Opus 4.6 (AWS Bedrock). The provider and reasoning depth are selectable from the composer. Anti-hallucination guardrails are active on all providers. See AI models and providers for details.

Is my data used to train AI models?

No. Documents you upload and queries you submit are not used to train any AI model. Data handling is described in the 8rney privacy policy.

Research#

What is the difference between Fast, Balanced, Deep, Expert, and Max modes?

These are pipeline modes that control how much reasoning the AI applies before answering. Fast is lowest effort and quickest; Expert is maximum effort in a single pass. Max is only available on the Claude Opus provider and triggers direct Bedrock maximum-thinking — use it for your most demanding research tasks. See Research assistant → pipeline modes for a full comparison.

Why does the AI sometimes say it cannot find a specific case?

Anti-hallucination guardrails instruct the AI to say "I cannot verify this specific citation" rather than fabricating case details. This is intentional — a fabricated citation is far more dangerous than an honest "I don't know". Use the Indian Kanoon or CanLII links in the interface to verify any citation independently.

What jurisdictions are supported?

India (Indian Kanoon case law + India Code statutes) and Canada (CanLII) are the primary live-database jurisdictions. For other jurisdictions, the AI uses its training knowledge and flags outputs accordingly. General international law and comparative law questions can be asked without a jurisdiction selector.

The research answer came back empty or showed "Retrying answer generation" — what happened?

If the AI model returns no answer text, the platform automatically attempts a non-streaming recovery pass. You will see a "Retrying answer generation" activity item in the feed. If the recovery also fails, the system surfaces the citations and sources that were retrieved so the work is not lost. Retry the question — narrowing it slightly usually resolves the issue.

Can I attach my own documents to a research question?

Yes. Type @ in the research composer to open the file mention menu. Select any document from your library or connected Google Drive. The AI will cite from your documents alongside the external databases.

Documents and drafting#

What file types can I upload?

PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, TXT, and HTML are supported. Office and text documents are converted with MarkItDown; PDFs, scans, images, and other formats are parsed with Reducto OCR.

How do I export a document as DOCX?

Click the export icon in the Document editor toolbar and select DOCX. The download includes all formatting. For SLP documents, use the Export page for additional formatting options.

What is the difference between the Document editor and SLP?

The Document editor is a general-purpose rich-text editor with AI assistance — use it for any document where you want AI help as you write. SLP (Structured Legal Product) is for generating a complete multi-section document from structured inputs — use it when you need a full brief, agreement, or report with a predictable section structure.

Playbooks#

Can I have multiple playbooks for the same practice area?

Yes. You can create as many playbooks as you need. A corporate team might have separate playbooks for acquisition targets and strategic investments, each with different risk thresholds.

Who can see a playbook?

Published playbooks are visible to all workspace members. Unpublished playbooks are private to the creator.

Google Drive#

Does 8rney modify or write to my Google Drive?

No. 8rney requests read-only access to your Drive. It never creates, modifies, or deletes Drive files.

My Drive file changed. Will 8rney pick up the update?

In full sync mode, 8rney receives webhook notifications from Google when a file changes and re-indexes it automatically. In JIT mode, the file is fetched fresh at query time. Either way, you are always working with current content.

Rollout#

Who should own the 8rney rollout?

A legal lead should own workflow quality and output standards. An ops-minded admin should keep the workspace structure and onboarding clean. Without both roles filled, the workspace tends to drift.

How many users should we start with?

Three to five users on a single pilot matter is enough for the first two weeks. Scale after you have one repeatable, teachable workflow — not before.

What should we do if the team keeps asking the same question that isn't in the docs?

Add it to this FAQ. Good documentation reflects real usage, not theoretical usage. If a question comes up three times in one week, it belongs in the docs.