Ask Research Questions in Clio Work

Vincent in Clio Work streamlines your legal research processes by acting as an AI-powered legal assistant with access to an expansive legal library. Vincent can answer your research questions and provide citations with links to primary sources, such as case law and statutes, as well as secondary sources, including legal journals and books, available via the Clio Library of authoritative legal information. This ensures that you can see exactly which sources it used to arrive at an answer, making verification easy. Vincent can also provide suggested research questions based on initial insights into the files uploaded and suggest modifications to your original questions to ensure that the answer it provides matches exactly what you need to know.

Ask a research question with Vincent

The Ask a Research Question workflow is designed to get you started with your initial research on a particular topic. Your research question can be general in order to quickly grasp the key legal findings in a specific area of law, or you can connect a matter or upload documents to provide specific contextual information before submitting your question to Vincent. When you use this workflow, Vincent analyses its comprehensive library of legal resources to provide a robust answer. Vincent also includes citations throughout the response, which makes it easy to verify the information.

A special workflow exists for asking research questions. You can ask general questions unrelated to a matter, or ask questions that is relevant to a particular matter.

Ask a general research question

1. From Clio Work, click Vincent in your navigation panel.
2. Select the Ask a Research Question workflow card.
   • You can use the search bar or select the Research topic filter to find this workflow quickly.
3. Type your legal research question.
4. Optional: Provide additional context for your research question.
   • Under the main text box where you ask a question, you can select the relevant jurisdiction to ground your research from the drop-down and click OK to confirm.
5. Click the submit icon (blue arrow).
   • Vincent may suggest a change to your question or ask for more information to ensure it provides a relevant answer. When this happens, respond to the question or submit Vincent’s suggested phrasing.

Once Vincent has everything it needs, it will begin to generate your research results.

Ask a matter-related research question

1. From Clio Work, click Vincent in your navigation panel.
2. Click the Select Matter dropdown.
3. Type to search for a particular matter, then select it to open the matter-specific Vincent workspace.
4. Click the Research dropdown, then select Ask a Research Question.
5. Type your legal research question.
6. Optional: Provide additional context for you research question.
   • Under the main text box where you ask a question, you can select the relevant jurisdiction to ground your research from the drop-down and click OK to confirm.
7. Click the submit icon (blue arrow).
   • Vincent may suggest a change to your question or ask for more information to ensure it provides a relevant answer. When this happens, respond to the question or submit Vincent’s suggested phrasing.

Once Vincent has everything it needs, it will begin to generate your research results.

Ask research questions in conversations

You can ask a research question during any conversation with Vincent, regardless of the initial workflow you selected or instruction or question you typed. During your conversation, Vincent may suggest research questions based on the conversation and has the ability to recognise certain questions or user inputs as research questions that require referencing Clio Library.

You are not limited to only asking research questions that are unrelated to your matters or documents. You can also ask research questions within the context of your matters or documents you upload. For example, when you analyse documents uploaded to a matter, Vincent may suggest certain research questions based on its initial analysis of the document. Learn more about that here.

Understand responses to research questions

If you selected and submitted a suggested research question during the course of a conversation, or if Vincent recognized a typed question as requiring research beyond your uploaded document or typed information, an additional right-hand panel will be visible when viewing a conversation. This panel—the Legal Authorities list—contains the sources Vincent used to respond to your research question. Each item in this list is accompanied by a short summary and the direct quote of the relevant text from the document. You can click on the item’s title to view the document in Clio Library. If the Legal Authorities panel is not immediately visible, you can click Legal Authorities below Vincent's response to the question to open it.

• Document title: Click on the title to open the document in Clio Library for review.
• Source summary: A brief summary of the document.
• Excerpt: The excerpt in the document that is relevant to Vincent’s response.

To copy a single source's title, summary, and excerpt, click the copy icon in the top right corner of the listed source.

The list of Legal Authorities is also organised by legal text type. You can click into the various subtabs to help you find particular text types. While some source texts that are included in the Legal Authorities list may previously have been overruled or no longer in force, Vincent may include them if Vincent deems them relevant.

Modify the list of sources used

You can modify the list of Legal Authorities to exclude specific legal authorities.

1. Find a research question in your conversation and click Legal Authorities below the response.
2. Click Modify List.
3. Using the checkboxes, deselect any document(s) that you do not want referenced in the response.
4. Click Apply > Confirm to regenerate the response.