About
Who we are, who pays, and how we work
A campaign that asks institutions to be straight with witnesses has to be straight about itself.
Who runs Every Witness
Every Witness is run by Richard Ryan (Founder, Every Witness) and operated by Caseform AI Limited, a commercial legal technology company, which pays for it entirely. It takes no donations, advertising or sponsorship.
It is not a charity. It is not part of, endorsed by or affiliated with the Witness Service, Victim Support, Citizens Advice, the courts, the police, any prosecution service or any government. It is not a law firm and is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board or their Scottish and Northern Irish equivalents.
Our commercial interest
Declared interest
Caseform AI Limited, which runs Every Witness, is developing two commercial products:
- Witness Assist. A digital service for people attending court as witnesses: attendance details, journey planning, court orientation, support requests and notifications in one place. In development. Not yet available.
- Caseform AI. The company's legal technology platform. Witness Assist is built by Caseform AI. In development. Not yet available.
If governments, courts, prosecutors or law firms decide to invest in better and more joined-up witness support, those products may be among the things they could buy. So the company and its founder stand to gain if this campaign succeeds. You should weigh what we say with that in mind.
These are the rules we set ourselves because of it:
- Every page carries a statement of who runs the site and of this interest.
- Any mention of Witness Assist or Caseform AI in an article is labelled as a declared interest where it appears.
- The support directory lists only independent organisations. Our own products do not appear in it, and nobody can pay to be listed.
- We make no claim that any court, prosecutor, charity or government has approved or uses our products. Witness Assist is in development, has been demonstrated only with made-up data and is not connected to any court or prosecution system.
- Our asks are about public standards and public data. None of them asks anyone to buy anything.
About Witness Assist
Witness Assist is being designed for the practical side of attending court: knowing when and where to be, planning the journey, seeing what the courtroom looks like and who sits where, asking for support, and being told promptly when something changes. It is built for familiarisation only. It does not discuss, rehearse or assess anyone's evidence, and it is designed so that it cannot. That line is drawn by the courts and we think it is the right one. E15
It is not yet available. When it is, this page will say so, and it will still not appear in our support directory.
How we check what we publish
- Sources first. A statement of fact appears on this site only if it is in our evidence register, with a link, the date we read the original and any limit on what it shows.
- AI-assisted, human-approved. We use an AI system to monitor official sources in the UK and abroad and to draft updates. Nothing is published until Richard Ryan has read and approved it. Responsibility for everything here rests with a person.
- No live cases. We do not comment on proceedings that are under way, and we never identify witnesses, complainants or children.
- Fair to the people doing the work. We criticise systems on the evidence. Where we criticise a named organisation we link to what it has said in response, if it has responded.
- Fact and opinion kept apart. Figures and quotations carry a source reference. Our arguments are labelled as ours.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, out of date or unfair, email admin@caseform.ai with the page and the source. We aim to reply within five working days. When we correct something, we say so on the page.
Contact
Caseform AI Limited
Registered office: D C Consulting, Dundee One River Court, 5 West Victoria Dock Road, Dundee, Scotland, DD1 3JT
admin@caseform.ai
Please do not email us details of a live case or anything that could identify a witness. We cannot give legal advice or help with an individual case. If you need support, see get help.