# CounselExpress

> Privilege-preserving litigation support for personal injury attorneys. Desktop app, AWS Bedrock-routed inference, four structured analyses produced from a folder of case files. Built specifically for the path *United States v. Heppner* (S.D.N.Y., February 2026) left open after holding that consumer-tier AI use waives attorney-client privilege.

CounselExpress is an installed desktop application for personal injury attorneys. Case files stay on the attorney's local machine; only the specific extracted text needed for a given analysis is sent to Claude over AWS Bedrock — the enterprise-tier inference path identified in *Heppner* as preserving the contractual confidentiality protections that consumer Claude desktop, ChatGPT, and similar consumer subscriptions do not provide. CounselExpress is the first product in a CogleGroup line aimed at line professionals doing emotionally draining, repetitive work inside regulated processes. Day 10 of 30 in Todd Merrill's Velocity Process challenge. Cogle GTM 1 of 3.

## The ruling that frames the product

In *United States v. Heppner* (S.D.N.Y., February 2026), a federal court held that information a defendant input to a consumer generative AI platform on his own initiative is not protected by attorney-client privilege or work-product doctrine. The court found that all recognized privileges require "a trusting human relationship," that no such relationship exists with a public AI platform, and that inputs are shared with a third party — which waives privilege the same way handing the document to opposing counsel would. The court explicitly distinguished enterprise-tier deployments with contractual confidentiality protections (Claude over AWS Bedrock, Claude commercial / government plans, ChatGPT Enterprise) as a different posture. CounselExpress is built on that distinction.

## What it does

CounselExpress reads a folder of case files (medical records, police reports, discovery responses, deposition transcripts, billing statements) and produces four structured outputs:

- **Medical Timeline** — Chronological treatment history across all providers, with cost matching against billing records and explicit gap detection (the kind defense counsel uses to undermine causation arguments).
- **Case Dashboard** — Statute-of-limitations countdown, service-of-process status, discovery deadlines, and the running list of what's outstanding for each case.
- **Police Report Analysis** — Fault determination, liability assessment, witness/evidence extraction, and the contradictions or weaknesses in the responding officer's narrative.
- **Discovery Analysis** — Response deficiencies under the relevant rules of civil procedure (with O.C.G.A. § 9-11-37 awareness for Georgia practice) and a draft motion-to-compel / 6.04 letter ready for attorney review.

## The privilege-preserving stack

Three architectural choices put CounselExpress on the right side of *Heppner*:

1. **Inference runs on AWS Bedrock**, not the consumer Claude API. Bedrock inputs are not used for model training and sit inside AWS's enterprise data-isolation terms — the contractual-confidentiality envelope the *Heppner* opinion identified as the privilege-preserving path.
2. **Files stay on the attorney's machine.** CounselExpress is an installed desktop application, not a SaaS where case files are uploaded to a vendor database. Local SQLite holds the structured analyses. Only the specific extracted text needed for the requested analysis ever leaves the laptop, and only at the moment the attorney triggers the analysis.
3. **Civil-procedure aware output.** The Discovery Analysis is structured around the rules attorneys actually cite — including O.C.G.A. § 9-11-37 for Georgia practice and Federal Rule 37. Output is cite-checkable and edit-ready, not chat-style transcripts.

## The thesis behind the product

CounselExpress is the first product in a CogleGroup line built explicitly around line professionals doing skilled, repetitive, emotionally draining work inside regulated processes. The PI attorney reading 3,000 pages of medical records on a Saturday. The chamber-of-commerce coordinator hand-emailing 800 members about an event. The county planner reviewing the same site-plan checklist for the forty-third time this month. CounselExpress takes the reading and structuring layer in litigation; the attorney keeps the judgment layer. Day 11's ChamberAdvance does the same shape for chamber engagement coordinators. Day 12's PlanCheckers does the same shape for county planners. The line professional is the customer.

## Privacy + practice posture

Files stay on the attorney's local machine. CounselExpress does not upload entire case files to a SaaS database. Inference is over AWS Bedrock with enterprise data-isolation terms, not the consumer Claude API. The default model is Claude Sonnet — chosen for the right cost-quality balance for litigation document work, not for marketing.

## How to engage

- **Waitlist:** https://counselexpress.app — cohort 1 opens May 12 once the full Cogle GTM cluster is live (CounselExpress Day 10, ChamberAdvance Day 11, PlanCheckers Day 12). First wave is solo and small-firm PI attorneys, Georgia-first.
- **CogleGroup (parent firm):** https://coglegroup.com — AI-native services firm, GP partnership Todd Merrill + Jim Hasty, Anthropic Claude Partner Network candidate.
- **Velocity Process build feed:** https://www.silverbackcto.com/builds/day-10-counselexpress

## Pages

- [Home](https://counselexpress.app): The privilege ruling, the four analyses, the privilege-preserving stack, the thesis, the waitlist
- [Build entry](https://www.silverbackcto.com/builds/day-10-counselexpress): Day 10 of 30 build narrative, stack, and Velocity Process notes
- [CogleGroup](https://coglegroup.com): The AI-native services firm CounselExpress ships under

## Contact

- Operator: Todd Merrill (todd@silverbackcto.com)
- Booking: https://fantastical.app/toddmerrill/tech-cxo

## Technical

- Stack: Electron desktop app, Claude Sonnet over AWS Bedrock, local SQLite, pdf-parse for extraction, encrypted electron-store for credentials
- Site stack: Astro 5 (static), Tailwind v4, AWS S3 + CloudFront
- License: proprietary (commercial product)
- Status: Day 10 launch (May 10, 2026); waitlist live, cohort 1 opens May 12