Trellis, a legal research firm specializing in state trial court data and insights, has recently expanded its AI functionality. The company has introduced a plugin for OpenAI’s ChatGPT in addition to launching its proprietary assistant, Trellis Chat. These new tools are aimed at complementing the Trellis MCP Connector for Claude, which was rolled out in May.
Trellis, which claims to hold the largest repository of U.S. state trial court data with over 2.5 billion records, aims to assist legal professionals in querying this vast data set through AI tools they may already use. This development allows attorneys to ask specific research questions within ChatGPT or Claude, accessing a wealth of legal filings, rulings, verdicts, and judicial data. The Trellis Chat offers similar functionalities within the Trellis platform itself.
The firm provides explicit examples of potential queries facilitated by these new connectors. Legal professionals can pull a judge’s ruling rates on summary judgments, profile expert witnesses, analyze opposing attorneys’ win rates, and even map a company’s litigation history. Trellis emphasizes that these connectors deliver more than straightforward answers. They help devise a strategic research plan—searching records and cross-referencing results with actual verdicts and motions before producing a response.
Nicole Clark, Trellis’s co-founder and CEO, noted the key advantage of integrating their comprehensive state court dataset with agentic AI models. “There is a real difference between a model that guesses at an answer from general memory and a system that does the research,” Clark emphasized, highlighting the importance of data-driven decision-making in the U.S., boasting the world’s largest state court system.
Looking forward, Trellis plans to further integrate its trial court data across a variety of legal tools, thereby extending agentic access. Current access options for Trellis data include its core platform for in-depth analytics, Trellis Chat for rapid complex question responses, AI connectors for platforms like ChatGPT and Claude, and a direct API enabling firms to import records into their own systems. Trellis currently covers over 3,500 courts across 2,500 counties in 45 states.
The original article detailing these advancements can be found here.