Nebula AI Case Explorer™ | Writing a Strong Case Summary
The case summary is the starting point for every AI Case Explorer analysis. It gives the AI the context it needs to assess document relevance and extract key people and events.
The case summary is the starting point for every AI Case Explorer analysis. It gives the AI the context it needs to assess document relevance and extract key people and events. The quality of your results is directly tied to the clarity and completeness of what you provide here.
Who should complete it: The attorney or case manager responsible for the matter.
When: Ahead of launching an AI Case Summary analysis.
Scope: All sections should be completed. Key People is optional in the template, but we recommend including it whenever possible — it meaningfully improves the quality of the AI's output.
A downloadable case summary template (a Word .docx file) is available directly from the wizard if you'd like to draft it outside the tool first.
The sections below describe what each part of the summary should contain, regardless of which entry method you use.
1. Company Name
Enter the full legal entity name of the target company (e.g., "Enron Corporation"). Use the formal corporate name as it appears in filings or legal documents — avoid abbreviations unless the abbreviation is itself the legal name.
2. Case Overview
Write 3–4 paragraphs covering:
Paragraph 1 — Who and what
- Who you represent (e.g., a regulator, a private litigant)
- What the investigation or case examines
- When the relevant conduct occurred
- Who was harmed, and at what scale
- What the representing party contends happened
- The specific mechanisms of the alleged misconduct
- The purpose of the investigation or litigation (e.g., accountability, investor protection)
- The specific legal or factual questions the review needs to answer, framed as "whether" statements (e.g., "whether financial statements accurately reflected...")
- The role of any gatekeepers involved (auditors, counsel, advisors)
- Any relevant oversight failures (board, governance)
Quality check: After writing, confirm the overview answers five questions — Who is involved? What happened? When? What are we trying to prove? Who was harmed?
3. Key People (recommended)
Provide a bulleted list, formatted as: Name — Title, Company (add role context if it isn't obvious from the title alone).
- Primary subjects or targets of the investigation
- Senior executives with decision-making authority over the relevant conduct
- Key gatekeepers (lead auditor, outside counsel, financial advisors)
- Whistleblowers or key witnesses
- Board members with direct involvement, if applicable
Who to include (aim for 5–15 people):
Who to exclude: Rank-and-file employees, peripheral contacts, and people only tangentially mentioned.
Quality check: If a reviewer encountered a document to or from this person, would they immediately flag it as potentially relevant? If not, reconsider including them.
4. Document Relevance Guidance — Always Relevant
List document categories that should be treated as relevant, structured by type. For example:- Financial records — statements, accounting documents, supporting schedules for the structures at issue
- Executive communications — emails and memos between key people about the subject matter
- Transaction documents — anything establishing, modifying, or discussing the relevant deals or structures
- Governance documents — board minutes, presentations, committee materials on relevant topics
- Gatekeeper communications — exchanges with auditors, outside counsel, banks, or advisors
- Internal analysis — forecasts, projections, valuations, risk assessments prepared for leadership
- External communications — correspondence with regulators, rating agencies, or analysts containing financial representations
- Trading or compensation records — stock transactions, bonus structures, incentive plans tied to performance
- Regulatory correspondence — communications with oversight bodies
Quality check: Each item should map back to at least one focus area named in your Case Overview. If it doesn't, either the overview is missing something or the item doesn't belong.
5. Document Relevance Guidance — Not Relevant
List exclusions. For example:
- Routine admin — day-to-day correspondence unrelated to the subject matter
- HR/personnel — non-executive employee records with no connection to the case
- IT/facilities — operational support tickets without financial implications
- Marketing/sales — customer-facing materials without financial representations
- Out-of-scope time periods — documents outside the relevant timeframe, with a carve-out for pattern or baseline evidence
Quality check: Each exclusion should carry a qualifier — "without connection to..." or "unrelated to..." — rather than standing as an absolute. Absolute exclusions are risky in review; always leave the door open for context-dependent relevance.
Editing after launch
Once themes have been generated, your case materials lock — editing the case summary rewrites your themes and can shift relevance scoring, key people, and key events across the project, so it's treated as a deliberate action rather than a casual edit. After an analysis has run, there are two ways to update the summary for those with an administrator role:
- Manually Edit – Within a given project, select the ‘AI Relevancy Tab,’ select the ‘Case Summary’ button and then ‘Edit Case Summary.’
- AI-Suggested Adjustments – after reviewing multiple documents, administrator can navigate to the ‘AI Relevancy’ tab and select ‘AI Analysis.’ AI Case Explorer suggests targeted changes to your Case Summary based on the relevance feedback you've given during review, rather than a full manual rewrite. See AI Relevancy and Refining Your Case Summary.
Every edit and re-run is saved as a new version, and you can restore a previous one at any time — see Project List and Version History.
Legal & Data Handling Notice
Information entered in the case summary is submitted to AI Case Explorer for automated processing and used to configure the AI's output for your matter.
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