Reading the law aloud, without sending a page off your phone
Court opinions and briefs are written to be read closely. They are almost never
read aloud well. Generic text-to-speech stumbles over §30116(a), guesses at
certiorari, and dutifully reads every reporter citation in the middle of a
sentence — right where you stop listening.
PerCuriam is our answer: a text-to-speech reader built specifically for legal documents, and built to run entirely on the device in your hand.
What makes it different
- Focused listening. The app reads the argument and steps over the reporter cites, dimming them on the page so you can still see exactly what was passed over — about 15% less listening on a typical opinion, and none of it the part you wanted.
- Legal pronunciation. Sections, dockets, reporters and Latin are expanded
before the voice ever sees them.
No. 24–621becomes “Number 24-621”; amicus curiae is said correctly. - A shelf that follows your caseload. Group documents into matters and play straight through one in reading order, the way you would work a binder.
The promise that matters
Nothing leaves your phone. Parsing, the voices, and playback all run on-device. There is no account to create and no server that could be subpoenaed for your reading history. Sync is optional, off by default, and end-to-end encrypted with a key only you hold.
A citation read wrongly is worse than one skipped: you stop listening to check it.
This is the first post on The Docket. More to come on how the engine handles footnotes, how on-device neural voices sound, and what we’re building next.