Comparison · DocPost vs. open-source legal AI

The download is free. The made-up citation is free too.

Open source is a real, appealing option — no per-seat bill, and your stack stays yours. Credit where it's due: these are good projects, and one even wires in a case-law lookup. But the tool still leans on the model to write and, mostly, to check its own work — and a model grading its own citations will still let a confident, wrong one through onto your filing, where the sanction is yours alone. DocPost verifies independently: a deterministic check of every citation and quote against real authority, and your own signed paper as the standard every draft is held to.

No affiliation. DocPost is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Mike (Open-Legal-Products) or Counsel OS (eigenlegal). Mike is available under the AGPL-3.0 license and Counsel OS under the MIT license; both names belong to their respective authors and are used here only to identify those projects. Details reflect their public releases and may change as those projects evolve.

§ I — Side by side

The whole comparison — including where they win.

Open source has real advantages, and we've checked every one honestly. Then look at everything else a legal team needs to get work out the door — and see how much of it a free download leaves on your plate.

What your team needs
DocPostHosted platform
MikeOpen source · AGPL
Counsel OSOpen source · MIT
Drafting & review
AI drafting
Draft and revise documents with a frontier model.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Sales forms
Your sales team assembles ready-to-send contracts without waiting on legal.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Contract review
Every clause read and flagged for what matters.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Scanned documents
Reads scanned and image-only PDFs with OCR, not just born-digital text.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Redlining
Marked-up edits and counter-language, inline.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Bulk review
The same questions answered across a whole document set at once.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Regulatory compliance
Detects which regimes apply — privacy, data, sector rules — and flags where the document falls short.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Trust & verification
Reporter citation lookup
Can resolve a citation to a real published case — and catch one that doesn’t exist.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Same-page disambiguation
Reporter cites aren’t unique — not even with the year — so lookups without disambiguation can report both false positives and false negatives.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Deterministic verification
Not a hallucinating model grading its own hallucinations.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Pin-cite verification
Confirms the cited page actually supports the point — not just that the case is real.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Quote-to-source
Every quote matched to the authority, verbatim, at the exact pin cite.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Short-form resolution
Resolves id., ibid., and supra back to the authority they point to.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Bluebook & local rules
Citation form checked against Bluebook and local jurisdiction rules — italics, reporter form, signals.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Statutes
Cited code sections checked against the actual statutory text.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Regulations
Regulatory citations checked against the real rule text.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Admin rulings & decisions
Agency adjudications and decisions covered, not just court opinions.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Your firm's knowledge
Your own playbook
Your signed contracts become the standard new drafts are held to.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Institutional memory
Your decisions and precedents carry forward, not restarted each time.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Clause library
Your standard language and fallback positions, ready to apply.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Lifecycle & governance
Renewal tracking
Auto-renewal windows and notice dates surfaced before they pass.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Approval gates
Nothing reaches the business side until counsel signs off.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
E-signatures
Execute documents directly in the platform, litigation grade.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Cost, control & operations
Free & open source
No subscription; the code is yours under an open license.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Self-hosting
Run the app on your own servers — though documents still go to a third-party model to be read.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Source access
Read the code, change it, and run your own version.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Zero deployment
No servers to stand up and nothing to host yourself.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Managed operations
Backups, patches, and uptime are someone else’s job.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
Browser-based
Open a browser and work; nothing to install per machine.
DocPost
Mike
Counsel OS
§ II — What a free tool can't hand you

Two things no download gives you. They're the two that get lawyers sanctioned.

Even the open-source tool that looks up case law still leans on the model to decide what to check and how to read the result — the model grading its own work. DocPost verifies independently and deterministically: it audits the finished document against real authority, with no model in the loop to trust.

The sanctions already on record
Verified

Citations you can stand behind.

Before a filing leaves your desk, you see which authorities are real and quoted accurately — and which ones you can't stand behind. Draft anywhere; put your name only on citations that hold. See the sanctions on the record.

Verbatim
Yours

Your contracts, as your standard.

Your best signed agreements become the yardstick every new draft is measured against — so the work sounds like your firm and holds your positions, instead of a stranger's boilerplate.

PlayMaker