Referent

Most legal software is a filing cabinet with a search box. Referent is built the other way round — as what its makers call a system of action, where AI agents carry out the operational work of a firm and the lawyer approves the result. Every action an agent takes is written to an audit log.

The agents cover the parts of a matter that consume time without generating fees. Intake links screen new clients and open the matter automatically. Inbound email and attachments are filed to the right matter without anyone dragging them. Replies, letters and routine documents are drafted and queued for review rather than sent. Court dates and limitation periods are tracked, and payment reminders and client check-ins are drafted on a schedule. Time capture and invoicing run off the same record, so billing stops being a month-end reconstruction.

Referent ships iPhone and Android apps for running matters away from the desk, and exposes an MCP server, so ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and other MCP-capable assistants can query and act on firm data directly.

The product targets solo practitioners and boutique firms of roughly two to ten lawyers; a Big Law tier is listed as forthcoming. On security, the company states AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2 or better in transit, per-firm isolated encrypted workspaces, role-based access with full audit trails, and no training of AI models on client data; SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are described as in preparation.

Pricing is not published — access starts with a free trial. Referent was founded by George Zaletski and is backed by Google for Startups and the NVIDIA Inception program.