Cloud Court vs Prevail: how they compare in 2026

Gibson ingests deposition and trial transcripts in common formats and extracts topics and keywords from them. It pulls every question and answer pair on a topic across any number of depositions, and can narrow the set to adverse witnesses, aligned witnesses or a witness type such as fact, expert or corporate. Reports and dashboards then drill down to the specific passages behind each result. A single run can cover one current hearing or more than 100 past transcripts. Typical questions are how witnesses testified on a topic, which answers conflict with their past testimony, which questions taking counsel asked before and how often defending counsel objected. The same pass collects objective measures of each deposition, such as objections by type, answer length and the questions each attorney asked. Depositions can be compared against benchmarks, and recurring witnesses, experts and opposing counsel are profiled across matters. Users tag testimony and build their own taxonomies, and reports can filter on those tags. Gibson also helps pick the most effective expert, damages or 30(b)(6) witness and flags what a witness should expect under questioning. According to the privacy notice, the AI products handle natural language processing, text analysis, document generation and insights. Cloud Court's CEO writes that the company holds both generative and non generative AI and has favored non generative methods for testimony.

AI drives the features the vendor leads with, on a court reporting and proceedings platform that would still run without it. The models produce the instant rough transcript of a session, the summaries written while a deposition is under way, and CheckMate's analysis through a connected language model. Transcription and translation of audio and video are AI work too. Around that sits a platform that does not depend on the models: video conferencing built for proceedings, exhibit tools and scheduling, and certified transcripts made by people. The About page says the platform includes a certified court reporter in every session. A firm buys a proceeding with a human record maker, and the AI makes that record available sooner and searchable. The models are the engine of core capabilities rather than the whole product.

Gibson's output is drawn from the transcripts themselves. Topic results are the question and answer pairs found in the record, and every report drills down to the content instances behind it, so a lawyer reads the testimony rather than a paraphrase. Testimony on a topic can be exported across witnesses. Views run from a global picture to a single passage, and testimony can be compared across witnesses, files and other indices. In a February 2024 post, CEO Michael Okerlund explains the preference for non generative AI with an example of ChatGPT placing quotation marks around words the Federal Rules of Evidence do not contain. The post concludes that lawyers should prefer ignorance to error. No accuracy measure for topic extraction or for generated reports is published.

Summaries are grounded to the record in a way a lawyer can follow, and the one accuracy figure has no method behind it. A post of 24 September 2026 on the AI summaries says each section carries a page and line range that opens the rough transcript at that point. It tells users to read the lines themselves before quoting an answer. The commercial page says the AI generally produces a 95% accurate rough transcript, with no test set, sample or definition of accuracy behind the figure. CheckMate's grounding is not published: the help center describes it querying connected models, and nothing states whether an answer cites the transcript line or document it rests on.

Gibson produces reports, dashboards and drill downs that litigators read and act on. It does not file, draft for filing or act in a matter by itself. Its pages frame the product as artificial intelligence working with human intelligence, with Gibson taking on tedious work while lawyers handle higher level thinking. During a deposition, the team can work in the platform with remote colleagues and look up its witness kit as testimony unfolds. Customers can use the standard reports and visualizations or have Cloud Court's team customize their views. That team of ten includes a litigation project manager and a data migration analyst. The privacy notice lists AI document generation among the functions of its AI products. No review step is described for the documents Gibson generates.

Human review stands between the AI rough and the certified record. The analysis tools carry a verification instruction and no control structure. Every certified transcript is said to go through a round of human review by credentialed court reporters. A post of 13 August 2026, written after an Indiana appeals judge noted a speaker attribution error, describes the layers. Remote participants get separate audio channels, trained monitors tag speakers live in hybrid and in person proceedings, and scopists check the transcript word for word against the recording before certification. CheckMate has no equivalent review step. It sends questions to language models during live testimony and helps teams find relevant documents and lines of inquiry. Nothing states what its output may not be used for, when it declines to answer, or how a lawyer confirms a point before acting on it in the room.

Five deployments are described without naming the customer. A firm in multidistrict litigation analyzed more than 300 historical deposition transcripts, and an insurer reviewed hundreds of examinations under oath after a disaster and recovered millions on fraudulent claims. A federal agency used Gibson against repeat plaintiffs and reports smaller settlements and more dismissals. Antitrust litigators analyzed more than 140 depositions taken by aligned counsel, and one organization built a knowledge base of depositions and trials spanning decades. Quotes come from a litigation associate and a partner at unnamed large firms. The associate says Gibson spares days of reading through hundreds of files and 20,000 pages of testimony. The EDRM added Cloud Court to its Trusted Partner Network in July 2023. Elevate named it in June 2024 among the companies it partners with to serve its customers, and Hire Counsel appears among its partners. At Cloud Court's January 2025 conference, which drew 100 registrants, Bill Childs, formerly of 3M and Solventum, described how tools like Cloud Court's had helped his team with testimony. None of these customers is named, and no result carries a figure beyond these counts.

Shook, Hardy & Bacon is the one named deployment, with no figures attached. Prevail's release of 23 February 2026 launching CheckMate says the firm has built Prevail AI into its Complex Litigation Strategic Counseling Practice Group for early case assessment, case work up and trial. It quotes Patrick Oot, a partner who co chairs that group, on how CheckMate changes preparation and questioning during testimony. Prevail names Discount Tire, Perkins Coie, Greenberg Traurig and Shook among its clients, without stories. No case study with figures is published, so what changed for the Shook practice in time, cost or outcome is not shown.

Safeguarding customer data is the stated focus of Cloud Court's security program, with controls for confidentiality, availability and security mapped to the SOC 2 criteria. The privacy notice says personal information handled by its AI products follows that notice and Cloud Court's agreements with third parties. The terms of service, which cover the website and purchases made through it, treat contributions posted to the site as non confidential and license them to Cloud Court for any purpose. No customer agreement for Gibson is published.

Confidentiality sits in the agreement, while the training and privilege commitments sit in published posts that the contract does not include. The terms bind each party to treat confidential information as confidential, and do not mention training or models. A post of 1 April 2026 on protecting privilege discusses United States v. Heppner and states the training position, and a later post extends that position to model providers. Nothing in the contract a firm signs carries those commitments, so they rest on the vendor's published word rather than on terms a firm could enforce.

Gibson is sold to litigators, in house legal teams, government agencies and insurers. Its pages pose strategic questions it helps answer, from which expert to put up to whether to settle or fight. The company was founded by litigators and in house counsel, and its CEO is a former litigator and general counsel. Neither the terms nor the product pages say anything about legal advice.

Supervision of AI work is engaged in public, and the advice line is never drawn. The privilege post names ethics opinions on evaluating AI tools for confidentiality risk and on informed consent. The post on the speaker attribution error quotes the Indiana appeals court's view that anyone using AI to help prepare a transcript is responsible for proofreading it. It separates Prevail's AI rough from its certified transcript. The terms carry no statement that the service or CheckMate's analysis is not legal advice, nothing on who may use the product, and no position on the licensing of digital court reporting by jurisdiction.

The stated position is a design choice. For testimony, Cloud Court favors non generative AI over generative tools, because a wrong answer stated with confidence costs a lawyer more than a gap. Its pages describe AI as having advantages and limitations and set Gibson up to work alongside lawyers rather than replace them. The security program includes a documented risk management policy, continual risk assessments and a formal risk register, with the detail held in the SOC 2 report. Since January 2025 it has run three CLE events on legal AI, the latest in May 2026, and its blog announced in April 2024 that the EDRM had formed a Testimony Evidence Reference Model project. No testing method or result for Gibson's extraction or reports is published.

Nothing published sets out how the AI is governed. No person or function is named as accountable for model behavior, and no testing before a release, evaluation results or principles for how the AI is built and used are published. The SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications cover an information security management system, not the conduct of the models. Transcription and speaker identification can fail unevenly across accents, dialects and the more than 90 languages handled, and nothing states how performance is measured across them. Human review of certified transcripts is an oversight step on the record, not a governance framework for the AI.

Product systems and data run in Microsoft's United States data centers, never in Cloud Court's offices. Employees reach production only through Microsoft Entra with device validation and multifactor authentication, day to day access is limited to engineering, and standing administrative access is restricted. Code is reviewed, tested and scanned before release, and new code passes through a separate QA environment segmented from production. Staff in the United States pass background checks, acknowledge the information security policy and take security and phishing training each year. A vendor management program reviews third party providers, and company laptops run full disk encryption and endpoint detection. The privacy notice keeps personal information no longer than 12 months after an account ends, and the terms describe routine backups. Security incidents are reviewed by the security team and handled with affected customers as each case requires. No subprocessor list or notice deadline is published.

Security controls and breach notice are published in working detail. The security page says customer data is encrypted at rest in AWS S3 with keys managed through AWS KMS. All access to customer data is logged and attributable to individual people, new employees get access only after a background check, and restorable backups are kept. The data security post adds that transcript editors reach only the jobs assigned to them, and that media cannot be downloaded or shared outside the platform. The terms commit to reporting a security breach within 72 hours, with the relevant details.

Terms of service last updated 27 March 2025 govern the website and purchases made through it. They provide the site as is, disclaim all warranties, and exclude direct, indirect and consequential damages. Liability is capped at the lesser of fees paid in the six months before a claim or $10,000. Users indemnify Cloud Court against third party claims arising from contributions, use of the site or breach of the terms, and the terms disclaim liability for lost or corrupted user data. Minnesota law governs, and most disputes go through at least 30 days of informal negotiation before binding arbitration. Nothing in them addresses liability for wrong output.

An infringement indemnity and a fee cap are in the agreement, and nothing allocates the risk of AI output. The terms of service took effect on 16 October 2023, under California law with AAA arbitration in San Diego. Prevail defends and indemnifies the subscriber against claims that the service infringes a copyright, a United States patent or a trademark, including reasonable attorneys' fees. Liability is capped at what the subscriber paid in the six months before the claim arose. All warranties are disclaimed, including any that the service will be secure or error free, and the subscriber indemnifies Prevail for its own breaches and negligent acts. Nothing says who bears the loss when an AI rough transcript, a summary or a CheckMate answer is wrong. The terms predate CheckMate and do not mention transcripts or court reporting.

Gibson takes deposition and trial transcripts in common formats, uploaded by the customer. Its dashboards and reports are configurable, and aligned parties can work in the same interface. Court reporting agencies are invited to partner on a direct pipeline from their transcripts into the platform, which Cloud Court says its clients have asked for. Its patent portfolio covers automated deposition transcription, remote proceeding capture, speaker identification and evidence linkage. No connection to another system is described.

Model and repository connections are described with some detail of what moves, and none reaches a firm's document or case management system. A secure API streams live transcripts and notes to the organization's chosen language model, and the help center documents personal connections and organization connections set by an administrator. On 24 February 2026 Prevail and Consilio announced that Prevail's capabilities would be delivered through Consilio's Aurora platform, letting clients query Consilio hosted document repositories from within Prevail. The announcement said availability would follow, and no later status is published. The government page names integration with RelativityOne and with Teams and Zoom, without describing what syncs. Session Review lets a team download documents singly or as one package. No document management, case management or other litigation support connection is published, and no Relativity implementation documentation was found.

Gibson is offered as software as a service through purpose built web applications. Its product infrastructure resides in Microsoft's data centers in the United States. Cloud Court relies on Microsoft's audited controls for physical and infrastructure security and points customers to Microsoft's Service Trust portal for those reports. Code moves through a separate QA environment before production, and the hosted service is updated continuously, with major changes announced in the app. Gibson runs only as this hosted service.

Storage and transcription work are both placed in the United States, and tenancy is not stated. The security page names Prevail's AWS region in the United States, and the data security post says customer data stays within Prevail's cloud environment in United States data centers. The government page goes further on processing: all hosting, editing, transcribing and data transfer take place within the continental United States, with no offshoring of data, labor or services. The CheckMate release says customer data stays within each organization's environment, and firms can send analysis to their own language model instead of Prevail's. Nothing states whether customers share infrastructure or are separated at the tenant level, whether a region outside the United States is available, or where a connected third party model processes the transcript it receives.

A SOC 2 Type I examination was completed as of 16 October 2023, and a SOC 2 Type II report followed in April 2024. Cloud Court commits to a SOC 2 Type II audit every year covering security, availability and confidentiality, and offers the report on request from its security page. The report, with its auditor and period, is released on request.

Two standards are claimed with the auditor named, and no report, date or scope document can be reached. The home page and the data security post state SOC 2 Type 2 attestation and ISO 27001:2022 certification, both by Prescient Security. The security page says the SOC 2 controls cover security, confidentiality, processing integrity, privacy and availability, and that HackerOne tests the infrastructure several times a year. The government page says Prevail holds authorizations to operate from multiple large federal agencies, none named. No trust center is published, the reports are not offered for download or on request on any page read, and no audit period or certificate date is published.

Both generative and non generative AI are in use, with non generative methods favored for testimony. Patent filings with an earliest priority date of 28 April 2017 describe probabilistic language modeling, matter specific language models and machine learning that ranks legal documents. The privacy notice says AI processing runs under agreements with third parties. No model or third party provider is named.

The architecture is described, and the providers of Prevail's own models are not named. A firm can use the native model or connect its own legal AI model, with Consilio's Aurora given as an example. The help center says the native solution is open to all members with no setup. The model or provider behind the native solution, the AI rough transcripts and the summaries is not named, and where those models run, or whether customers hear of changes, is not stated. The help center lists the providers a firm can connect to CheckMate with its own account or a shared organization connection. They are Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI or Copilot, Consilio and local Ollama models. Only a firm's own connected model is known to it; what sits under transcription and the native model is not.

Each product page ends in a consultation request. The terms of service accept card payment, describe recurring subscription charges billed through an online account, make purchases non refundable and let a customer cancel at the end of the paid term. Payments are in United States currency, and prices may change at any time. Resellers, referral partners, software alliances and legal service providers are invited to sell alongside the company. No price is published for Gibson.

No price appears anywhere on the site. The terms refer to the amount a subscriber has paid under its subscription, without saying what the subscription covers or costs. CheckMate is sold as an add on for new and existing customers, with no price stated. The About page ties feature inclusive pricing to savings of up to 40% on litigation costs. Whether charging is by page, hour, seat or session, and whether translation and summaries are priced apart from the court reporting, is not shown. Every route to a number runs through a demo request or a scheduling contact.

Four buyer groups are named. Law firms use Gibson in large volume and business critical cases, class and mass tort matters, antitrust, serial litigation against the same parties and deposition training. Corporate legal departments use it for pattern litigation, serial plaintiffs and oversight of outside counsel. Government agencies build testimony knowledge bases on repeat plaintiffs and experts, and insurers analyze examinations under oath and track attorney, firm and witness performance. Gibson handles depositions, trial transcripts and other hearings, and court reporting agencies are invited to partner. The work is aimed at matters with many depositions or a long history of testimony. Cloud Court places it in new attorney onboarding, motion and brief drafting, settlement and mediation, witness preparation and trial outlines. By its own definition, testimony intelligence work follows or overlaps eDiscovery and comes before deposition designations. No jurisdiction is named and no limit on matter type or size is stated.

Law firms, corporate legal departments and federal agencies buy through the commercial and government offerings. Depositions, arbitration hearings and internal investigations are the named proceedings, and the Consilio announcement adds compliance reviews. Sessions run remote, hybrid and in person, transcription and translation cover more than 90 languages, and the government offering adds hearings, interviews and redaction of personal information. The CheckMate release says Prevail holds federal Authorizations to Operate. The blog addresses arbitration in several posts in 2026. No jurisdictions are named for the certified transcripts or the court reporters' qualifications, no practice areas are named for the analysis, and service outside the United States is not stated.