Frequently Asked Questions

Silkworm ingests your case bundle and extracts the material that actually matters. It turns large, document-heavy cases into a structured, easy-to-skim dashboard showing what the case is about, what’s disputed, what the key issues are, and where the risks lie. It’s designed to help you get oriented quickly, understand the shape of a case fast, and reduce the time spent at the front end working out what matters.

Silkworm is built for UK criminal barristers who regularly work with large, document-heavy case bundles and need to get across a case quickly without missing something important. It’s particularly useful when you’re newly instructed, picking up a case mid-stream, preparing for a conference, or facing tight turnaround times. Instead of manually sifting through hundreds or thousands of pages to work out what matters, Silkworm helps you see the structure of the case fast: the core allegations, the disputed facts, the key issues, and the potential risks. The result is quicker orientation, better preparation at the front end, and more time spent on strategy rather than document triage. Silkworm is currently designed specifically for UK criminal practice. Other practice areas and roles are not yet supported.

Silkworm is not a substitute for legal training or professional judgment. It is not intended for litigants in person, non-UK jurisdictions, or non-criminal practice areas at this stage.

No. Silkworm does not exercise legal judgment, make strategic decisions, or take responsibility for a case. It organises and surfaces information from a bundle so that lawyers can understand it faster. It reduces time spent on document triage and initial orientation. It does not replace analysis, advice, drafting, client handling, or advocacy. Used properly, it supports junior lawyers by accelerating the mechanical front-end work and freeing up time for higher-value legal thinking and learning.

Silkworm helps users: - Ingest and organise case materials - Generate structured summaries, chronologies, and issue-focused views - Surface relevant passages across large document sets - All outputs are designed to support, not replace, legal analysis.

Silkworm is designed for reliability and safe failure. Where the bundle is unclear, incomplete, or inconsistent, Silkworm highlights uncertainty rather than inventing detail, as many AI tools do. All outputs must be reviewed by the user. For any claim, Silkworm provides page-level references back to the source material so you can verify key points quickly in context. As with any automated analysis, errors can occur—especially where documents are ambiguous, poorly scanned, or internally inconsistent—so Silkworm should be used as an orientation and triage tool, not as an authority.

Where documents are ambiguous or incomplete, Silkworm flags this explicitly. It does not attempt to resolve legal uncertainty or make assumptions beyond the source material.

Only the user. Silkworm provides structured analysis and highlights material within a case bundle, but it does not make decisions, form legal advice, or assume responsibility for outcomes. Professional judgment, strategy, and all final conclusions remain with the barrister using the tool.

Silkworm is designed to support compliance with professional standards by maintaining traceability to source documents and requiring human review. Users remain responsible for ensuring their use complies with applicable professional rules and disclosure obligations.

No. Case data is not used to train Silkworm’s systems or any third-party AI models. Access to uploaded bundles is tightly restricted and only permitted with explicit written consent where necessary (for example, to diagnose a reported issue).

All data is encrypted at rest and in transit, processed and stored on European-based servers, and handled in line with UK data protection requirements and EU GDPR.

When a case is deleted by the user, it is securely retained for 60 days for compliance and operational reasons, after which it is permanently deleted.

Silkworm uses a combination of different models (including OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Mistral) to process case materials. Processing is conducted on European-domiciled servers, with contractual safeguards in place to maintain data security.

Pricing is subscription-based. Discounts are available for chambers and small practices. Details are available on enquiry.

Silkworm is currently available in limited early access while we roll it out carefully with UK criminal practitioners.