MikeA legal AI workspace for construction law firms
Construction law firms use Mike to read prime contracts, subcontracts, daily logs and project correspondence, build delay and change order chronologies, and check whether notice and claim provisions were followed. Every statement cites the document and page behind it, so claims rest on the project record.
Updated
Attorney: Did the mechanical subcontractor give timely written notice of the March delay under the subcontract?
Mike: Notice was probably late. Section 8.3 of the subcontract requires written notice within seven days of the delay event [1]. The daily report records the crane failure on March 12 [2], but the first written notice is dated March 26 [3]. I drafted a short memo that sets out the timeline and the argument for waiver.
- [1] Mechanical subcontract, § 8.3, p. 22
- [2] Daily reports, March, Mar. 12 entry, p. 14
- [3] Notice letter from subcontractor, p. 1
Mike created Hollis notice memo.docx.
Example matter. Names and documents are fictional.
A construction dispute is built from paper that piles up for years: schedules, pay applications, requests for information, change orders, meeting minutes and daily reports. Mike reads across all of it, ties events to the contract clauses that govern them, and shows where the record supports a claim and where it does not.
Cuanto Labs installs Mike for your firm, connects it to the folders where your project files live, and loads your contract review checklists and claim templates. Owner financials and bid documents stay inside your firm's own installation.
What Mike does for your practice
- Notice and claim compliance
- Mike finds the notice, claim and waiver provisions in the contract and checks the project correspondence against each requirement: who had to be notified, in what form and by when. It lists what was sent, what was missing, and the page that proves it.
- Delay chronologies
- From daily reports, schedule updates and meeting minutes, Mike builds a dated chronology of delay events with the responsible party and the document supporting each entry. Gaps and conflicting accounts are flagged for the attorney.
- Change order and pay application tables
- Tabular Review pulls amounts, dates, scope descriptions and approval status from every change order and pay application into one table, so the total of disputed and unpaid work comes from the documents and every line can be traced back.
- Contract and subcontract review
- Mike reads a prime contract or subcontract against your checklist and reports on pay-if-paid language, indemnity, retainage, differing site conditions, flow-down terms and dispute resolution, with clause and page references.
- Lien and payment documents
- Mike drafts preliminary notices, lien waivers and demand letters from your firm's forms, using amounts and dates from the pay applications in the file. The attorney reviews each document and its deadline before it is served.
- Claim narratives and research
- Mike drafts the factual narrative for a claim or demand from the chronology, and searches published case law on questions such as the enforceability of a no-damages-for-delay clause. It reads the opinions before summarizing them, and case-law citations are checked against CourtListener.
How we set it up for your firm
- Your project folders, connected
- We connect Mike to the drive or document system where project files are stored, so an attorney can ask about a job without gathering documents again.
- Your contract checklists
- Your review checklists for prime contracts, subcontracts and owner agreements become saved workflows, so each new contract gets the same clause-by-clause review.
- Forms and notices
- We load your notice letters, lien forms, demand letters and claim templates, so drafts match your format and the deadlines your jurisdiction requires you to track.
- Project record tables
- We build Tabular Review templates for change orders, pay applications and requests for information, with the columns your claims team already tracks.
- Notice and claim-window clauses
- We build a saved workflow that finds the notice, claim and waiver provisions in each prime contract and subcontract and tabulates the triggers and stated time limits, so the team sees the windows that govern a job.
Questions attorneys ask
Can Mike read schedules and drawings?
Mike reads text in schedules, reports and specifications once documents have been through text recognition, which we set up for your installation. It does not interpret scheduling software files or drawings the way a scheduler or engineer would. Expect it to work from the written record, and to say when a page is unreadable.
How does it handle thousands of project emails?
If the correspondence is exported into the matter folder, Mike can search it, read the threads that matter, and build a chronology with each entry linked to its source. For very large sets, Tabular Review pulls date, sender, subject and topic into a table so your team can sort and review it.
Will Mike tell us whether a claim is valid?
It reports what the contract says and what the record shows, with pages, and drafts the memo or narrative you ask for. Whether a claim is strong, and how to present it, is a judgment for the attorney. Mike organizes the record so that judgment starts from complete facts. The result is a memo that tells the partner what the record establishes before strategy is discussed.
Can it track lien and notice deadlines?
Mike can extract the dates and deadlines stated in the contract and project documents into a table, and draft the notice or waiver. Statutory deadlines depend on your jurisdiction and must be confirmed by your attorneys and docketing process. Mike supports that process but is not a replacement for it.
Can Mike compare a subcontract with the prime contract?
Yes. Mike reads both and lists the provisions that flow down, the ones that were changed, and the prime contract terms missing from the subcontract, such as dispute resolution, indemnity or pay-if-paid language, with the section and page of each. The attorney decides whether a gap is a risk for the client.
Can Mike prepare a delay narrative from daily reports?
Mike reads daily reports and meeting minutes, tabulates delay events by date, cause and trade, and drafts a narrative linking each event to its source page. It does not run critical path analysis. A scheduling expert or your own tools still determine which delays affected completion, and the narrative should be revised once that analysis exists.
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Bring Mike to your firm.
Book a 30-minute call. Tell us about your practice and the systems your documents live in, and we'll come back with a setup plan for your firm.
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