The Unshaken Engine · In development
Legal-system AI agents and character AI agents, working together
AI characters, real law, your own case and evidence: a courtroom simulator that trains people to stay steady when it counts.
Real law · Real pressure · Real guardrails
Most of the engine is planned, not built yet. See the status table below for what exists today.
Why an engine
One engine. Every edition is a law pack plus a scenario library.
Characters, voices, the director, guardrails, analysis, and the jury model are shared. A new edition adds content—law, scenarios, and characters' goals—not a new product, and each edition makes the engine better for the others.
Five layers, wrapped in guardrails and corrective AI
1. Inputs
Law packs (federal, state, county), your story by voice or text, and your documents and evidence.
2. Knowledge
A law graph of rules, deadlines, and elements; a case fact graph of who, what, and when; an evidence index.
3. Agents
Companion, judge, opposing counsel, witnesses, jurors, mediator or evaluator, and a director that runs the scene.
4. Experience
AI voices and mood, scenes and characters, timers, and curveballs.
5. Analysis
Speech-to-text, delivery and content scoring, debriefs, and progress over time.
Character-based AI agents
Every character is its own agent with goals, limits, and a voice
Each agent = persona + goals + knowledge scope + rules + voice + a temperament dial from patient to impatient.
| Agent | Goal in the scene | Knows | Bound by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Judge | Run a fair, efficient hearing | Law pack, procedure, the record | Procedure rules; neutrality |
| Opposing counsel | Win, within the rules | Their side's facts and evidence | Rules of evidence; no false facts |
| Witness | Tell their version | Only what they saw | Their own memory and bias profile |
| Adjuster / evaluator | Settle low; assess fairly | Claim file; interview guide | Role-specific policy |
| Jurors | Decide and react | Only what's admitted | Attitude profile; jury instructions |
| Companion (your side) | Listen, calm, prepare, debrief | Your story, feelings, and goals | Not therapy or legal advice; never scripts testimony |
The director: runs the hearing like a real courtroom
Procedure state machine
Each hearing type is a sequence of phases—call the case, openings, testimony, objections, ruling—defined by the law pack.
Turn-taking
Who speaks, who may interrupt, and when you're on the clock.
Timers
Real time limits by jurisdiction or judge setting.
Curveball scheduler
Injects disruptions at the right moment and difficulty.
Adaptive difficulty
Raises or lowers pressure based on your stress and scores.
Continuity
Remembers what was said, so agents can point out inconsistencies.
Legal-system AI agents
Federal, state, and county law, compiled into rules the engine can check
Federal
U.S. Code, eCFR regulations, and the Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure and Evidence.
State
Statutes, court rules, evidence rules, court forms, and deadlines.
County / court
Local rules, standing orders, judge practices, and filing fees.
Case law can be referenced from public sources such as CourtListener. Deadlines and fees are computed by rules, never guessed by a model.
Importing your case
Tell your story; the engine builds the other side's best case
Story intake
Speak or type what happened; guided questions fill gaps.
Document import
Orders, complaints, notices, letters, texts, forms.
Fact graph
People, dates, places, claims; disputed vs. undisputed facts.
Timeline
Built automatically and editable; flags gaps and conflicts.
Scenario generation
Your hearing, with the other side's strongest arguments.
Privacy by default
Encrypted, consent-based, deletable; never used for training without opt-in.
Evidence becomes practice material
Body-cam and dash-cam video
Transcribe, separate speakers, timestamp, and index key moments
Practice: Cross-examine the officer on what the video shows
Police reports
Read text and extract people, times, and statements
Practice: Spot gaps between report and video
Photos, texts, emails
Date, sort, and link to the timeline
Practice: Lay foundation for an exhibit
Medical, financial, school records
Extract dates, amounts, diagnoses—only with consent
Practice: Explain damages or a child's needs
Integrity
Originals never altered; files hashed; notes kept separately
Practice: Know what can and can't be used
AI voices and the nervous system
Train under pressure so the real day feels familiar
37 studies
1,837 participants: stress inoculation training reduced performance anxiety and improved performance under stress.
5 levels
From a patient judge in a quiet room to a packed docket, interruptions, and a clock.
Mood + tone
Voices shift—calm, curt, skeptical, impatient—with courtroom ambience.
Graded exposure: pressure rises only as you steady, and recovery skills—pause, breathe, "Could you repeat the question?"—are taught in the moment.
The legal stress companion
Heard first, prepared second
Listens before it teaches
Reflects back what happened and what's at stake.
Helps process the feelings
Guided naming, grounding, and separating feelings from facts before testimony.
There at 2 a.m.
After the papers arrive or the night before a hearing.
Turns feelings into readiness
Moves gently into practice when you're ready, then back to support.
Helps the lawyer, too
With consent, a short "what I want my lawyer to know" note.
Empathy with boundaries: a companion, never a replacement for people
Not therapy
Supportive listening and coping skills only; suggests a counselor when stress runs deep.
Not legal advice
Legal decisions go to a lawyer or legal aid.
Crisis detection
Signs of self-harm or danger route at once to 988 and domestic-violence hotlines.
Builds real support
Encourages friends, family, support groups, and your lawyer.
Never takes sides against family
Children are never the target.
Private by default
Your feelings journal stays with you; never shared with firms or used for leads.
Voice and answer analysis
How you said it, and what you said
Delivery
Pace and pauses, filler words, answer length vs. the time limit, volume and pitch steadiness, recovery after an interruption.
Content
Did you answer the question? Consistent with earlier answers and evidence? Guessing, hedging, volunteering, arguing? Key facts covered? Respectful to the court?
Not a lie detector. Voice stress isn't a reliable truth signal, so we score delivery and content, never honesty.
The jury engine
Local jury pools that react to your strategy
- Local pools built from public census data for the venue, with configurable attitude profiles.
- Attitudes, not stereotypes—trust in institutions, views on lawsuits, authority—never race or sex.
- Visible reactions: attention, confusion, skepticism, and sympathy as feedback.
- Honest limits: simulated jurors only. We never read real jurors' faces.
Curveballs and antics
The real courtroom won't follow your script, so neither do we
Timed to your level, and every curveball ends with a recovery lesson in the debrief.
Neurosymbolic guardrails
Neural agents create; symbolic rules decide what's allowed
Neural
Language models write each character's lines and keep the scene natural.
Symbolic checks, every line
- Matches the law pack and procedure
- Deadlines, fees, citations verified by rules
- No legal advice, outcome predictions, or scripted testimony
- Agents stay in role and knowledge scope
- Safety triggers route to help
Spoken
Only lines that pass. Others are repaired or replaced.
Corrective AI, for the errors guardrails miss
Verifier models
A second model checks claims against the law pack and case facts.
Corrective retrieval
When confidence is low, re-fetch and re-ground the answer.
Contradiction detector
Catches an agent contradicting the record or itself.
In-scene correction
The judge or coach corrects the record on the spot, as courts do.
Post-session audit
Sessions sampled and reviewed; errors labeled by type.
Regression suite
Every fixed error becomes a test the engine must keep passing.
Many languages
Practice in the language you think in
Spanish first
Voices, speech recognition, scenes, and law packs.
Interpreter mode
Practice testifying through an interpreter, with realistic delays.
Reviewed translations
Law packs reviewed by bilingual lawyers.
Plain-language levels
Same law, different reading levels.
Legal glossary
Every term, in every language, one tap away.
Accessibility
Captions, large text, voice-only and low-bandwidth modes.
Where we are
Working prototypes today; the engine generalizes them
Playable simulator prototypes: Small Claims, Custody, Court Order, Hearing, Trial, Injury
Built (prototypes)Animated characters with talking mouths, browser AI voices, timers, debriefs
Built (prototypes)Spoken answers with keyword scoring
Built (Injury prototype)LLM character agents and the director
PlannedLaw-pack pipeline and lawyer review
PlannedCase and evidence import (including body-cam)
PlannedJury engine, neurosymbolic guardrails, corrective AI
PlannedSpanish and interpreter mode
PlannedPrototypes are not playable on this website yet.
Privacy, safety & trust
Built so you can practice without putting yourself at risk
These are the design commitments for the engine. Items marked “Planned” are not live yet; today the site only stores the email address you give the waitlist.
Privacy
Live today- The waitlist stores only your email—visitors and other users can't read it.
- The lawyer-search case description stays in your browser and is never sent or saved.
- We don't sell personal information.
Privacy
Planned- Your case details and evidence stay yours: private by default, never shown to other users.
- You choose what to import, and you can delete it.
- No advertiser or partner sees your case unless you choose to share it.
Safety
Planned- Symbolic rules check what characters say against real Michigan law and procedure.
- Corrective AI flags and fixes mistakes the guardrails miss.
- Practice only: no outcome predictions, no legal advice, clear pointers to real help.
Trust
Planned- Law packs reviewed before release, with sources you can check.
- Scores explain what to practice—they never predict your case.
- Humor targets courtroom quirks, never your pain or the people involved.
Well-being
Planned- A stress companion helps you pause, breathe, and retry at your pace.
- Crisis resources (911, 988) are always one tap away.
- You control the difficulty—turn the pressure up only when ready.
Transparency
Live today- Every feature on this site is labeled built, prototype, or planned.
- Paid lawyer listings are labeled “Ad” and never presented as recommendations.
- Read our privacy notice and terms in plain language.
Read the Privacy notice and Terms.
Follow the engine as it's built
Unshaken provides information and practice, not legal advice.
See every edition →Research and references
- Saunders, Driskell, Hall & Salas, "The Effect of Stress Inoculation Training on Anxiety and Performance," U.S. Army Research Institute (1996).
- Lieberman et al., "Putting Feelings Into Words," Psychological Science (2007). Ayers et al., JAMA Internal Medicine (2023). Tyler; Burke & Leben, "Procedural Fairness," Court Review (2007).
- Barrett et al., "Emotional Expressions Reconsidered," Psychological Science in the Public Interest (2019).
- Yan et al., "Corrective Retrieval Augmented Generation," arXiv:2401.15884 (2024).
- Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986); J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127 (1994).