MatterGraph · for South African litigation practices

Legal research your firm can stand behind.

MatterGraph reads the judgments you give it, finds the passages that support each point in your argument, and shows you exactly where they are: the case, the paragraph, the page. You open the source, you decide, and the record of what you checked stays inside your firm.

One point, with its authority Synthetic test material
A point in the MatterGraph review workspace with two supporting passages. Each shows its citation, court, and page, the passage quoted word for word, and a link that opens the source judgment.
  1. 1The case, its paragraph, and its page.
  2. 2The passage itself, word for word.
  3. 3One click opens the judgment at that page.
Captured from the running product on synthetic test judgments. No real case is shown.
Straight to the passageNo more paging through judgments for the line you half-remember. Each point comes with the passages that bear on it, ranked, with paragraph and page.
Nothing inventedMatterGraph quotes the judgment. It does not summarise and it does not fill gaps. When your authorities do not support a point, it says so instead of guessing.
Built for a South African firmCourt-published judgments, your own deployment, your own record. Designed around POPIA and the duty to check every authority you cite.

01 · Why MatterGraph

The research tools everyone is trying are fast. They are also confident when they should not be.

A

A citation you can open, not one you have to trust

Every result points at a real passage in a real judgment and opens it at the page. If it cannot point at one, there is no result, only a note saying so.

B

Your judgment stays the last word

MatterGraph does research. It does not decide what the law is. A lawyer reviews each result against the source and signs it off, and that sign-off is what goes on the file.

C

A record you can show

Who checked what, against which passage, and when, is kept in a tamper-evident log. If a colleague, a client, or a court asks how you got there, you can show them.

D

Confidentiality by design

It runs inside your firm, one deployment per practice, nothing pooled with other firms. When an instruction ends, the deployment is removed and you receive a receipt.

02 · How it works

Ask, review, keep the record.

  1. 1

    Ask

    State the legal question and the points you need to make. MatterGraph searches the judgments loaded for the matter and brings back the passages that come closest, each with its paragraph and page.

  2. 2

    Review

    Open each cited judgment at the cited page. Accept the passage, reject it, or send corrections. Where nothing supports a point, it says so plainly.

  3. 3

    Keep the record

    The reviewed result is frozen and your sign-off is attached to it. It becomes part of the matter's record, inside your firm, ready to be shown.

The pilot is opening

We are inviting a small number of litigation practices to shape MatterGraph first.

Enquiries open in the last quarter of 2026 and the pilot runs in the first quarter of 2027. Everything about it, what we ask, what you get, and how to apply, is on the pilot page.

Read about the pilot

03 · Who we are

Built in Johannesburg by people who take the boundary seriously.

Tim Lai · Founder

Platform engineer. Through ReactorJet, Tim builds systems for organisations that need scale and systems for organisations that need their data kept private, and knows the difference. MatterGraph applies the second discipline to legal research: confidentiality enforced by how the software is built, not by a promise.

SA Legal Intelligence

A trading name of the founder, Illovo, Sandton, with salegalintelligence Pty Ltd being incorporated to carry the business. MatterGraph is the product.

How we work

We write down what the software will and will not do, and why, and we share it with the firms we work with. If something changes, you see the change and the date.

Questions before you read about the pilot? Write to us. A named person replies within two working days.