How was SmartJudge built and who checked it?
It’s a fair question to ask of any tool that tells you how your finances might be divided. SmartJudge applies the law of England and Wales using a list of leading cases vetted by a practising family law solicitor, and every report is checked before you see it.
Here is how a report is made, who reviews what, and the things we deliberately don’t claim, so you can decide for yourself how much weight to give it.
- A curated listof leading England and Wales authorities
- Only a fewcitations in any report, each one checked
- England & Walesthe only law it applies
- No accuracy scoreclaimed, by deliberate choice
Three people, three separate jobs
The roles are kept apart on purpose. No one person approves the law, the questions and the handling of your data.
- Legal reviewerA practising family law solicitorA practising family law solicitor at Paradigm Family Law reviews the legal framing and signs off any change that affects it: the cases SmartJudge may cite, how each principle is stated, and the “not legal advice” wording.
- Questionnaire reviewerA senior family law practitionerReviewed the questionnaire field by field: the label, the help note, and whether each answer matters to how a court would divide the assets. Where the wording was rewritten, the reviewer’s wording was used.
- Data protection leadKaren Arndt, FounderAccountable for how your information is handled. Deliberately not the legal reviewer, whose firm receives your documents only if you choose to book a paid review.
Legal sign-off is a standing gate, not a one-off check at launch: a change to the legal reasoning does not go live without the reviewer’s written approval, and each approval is recorded with a date.
How a report is made
Five steps sit between your answers and your report. Two of them can stop a report altogether, and that is the point.
- The right law. The first question is whether your divorce falls under the law of England and Wales. If it doesn’t, SmartJudge stops and tells you why.Can stop the report
- Nothing essential left blank. Our legal reviewer ruled that a thin report is a misleading one, so every essential question needs an answer. Ticking “not known” counts, and the report will say so. A silent blank doesn’t.Can stop the report
- The framework. Your answers are set against the section 25 checklist of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and the vetted list of leading cases. A few comparable published judgments may be added, labelled as supporting illustrations only.
- A draft in plain English. Claude, a large language model made by Anthropic, applies the framework to your answers. It isn’t asked to remember the law from its training, and it doesn’t search for cases itself.
- The citation check. Every case the draft cites is matched against the vetted list. Only a small number may be cited, and where the list relies on a specific paragraph of a judgment, the draft must name it.
Where does my information go?
Your data is encrypted, stored in the London region, never sold and deletable at any time. To write your report, we use a leading AI provider under strict contract terms: your information is never used to train AI models and is deleted within 30 days, unless it is flagged for misuse or the law requires it to be kept. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.
Where the case law comes from
Two sources, with a strict ranking between them. Open-ended searching across thousands of judgments is exactly how AI tools end up inventing authority, so the curated list always comes first.
- The only source of legal propositions
- Every citation must come from here
- Changes only with the reviewer’s approval
- May back up a principle already on the list
- May never introduce a new principle
- May never be the only basis for a citation
When the law changes, the legal reviewer decides whether a new judgment joins the list and how its principle is stated. Nothing joins because the AI noticed it.
What we don’t claim
Why there’s no accuracy figure
Financial remedy is discretionary: two judges can weigh the same facts differently, and published judgments are a skewed sample of the hardest cases. A percentage score would look reassuring and mean very little. Instead, each report shows its working: a likely range, the reasoning, the named authorities and the points a judge would be most likely to press. A solicitor can check every one of them.
Is the review independent?
Partly, and we want to be precise. Both reviewers are at Paradigm Family Law, the firm that provides our paid reviews. They work at a firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and are accountable for what they sign, but they aren’t a third party with no connection to us. Any family law solicitor can check a report independently, because every case it relies on is named.
Is it legal advice?
No. SmartJudge is an educational tool that gives you an informed starting point. It isn’t a law firm, and a report is not a prediction of what will happen in your case. For advice you can rely on, see the limits of AI and when to ask a legal expert.
SmartJudge and What Would a Judge Say? Ltd are not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. If you book a review with Paradigm Family Law, you become a client of an SRA-regulated firm, with the protections that brings.
Check it for yourself
- Read an example report. See the range, the reasoning and the named authorities before you enter a single figure. Open the sample report
- Look up a cited case. Every authority in a report is a published judgment you can find on The National Archives’ Find Case Law.
- Check our ICO registration. Registration ZB810938 is on the Information Commissioner’s public register.
- Compare it with a chatbot. See why you can’t just use ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
The assessment is free and private. See the method at work on your own figures.
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