Pentagon taps Casepoint’s AI products to enhance classified legal ops

The Pentagon opted to purchase Casepoint’s AI-enabled software products for classified legal operations and secure data workflows via a new blanket purchase agreement worth up to $98.8 million, officials from the company announced Wednesday.

“Government agencies are facing a perfect storm of challenges,” Casepoint’s CEO Paul Colangelo told DefenseScoop ahead of the announcement. “The volume of information they manage continues to grow exponentially, while expectations around transparency, accountability, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance continue to increase.”

The company’s platform is designed to help the Defense Department’s legal components tackle modern operational demands — like those growing caseloads, an ever-increasing volume of Freedom of Information Act requests and data, fixed statutory response deadlines for those FOIA and other mandatory declassification reviews, oversight from Inspector General and Government Accountability Office audits and congressional inquiries, and persistent workforce and budget limitations.

“Ultimately, agencies are looking for ways to improve transparency, reduce risk, and better serve citizens while managing increasingly complex information environments,” Colangelo said.

In a press release, officials from the company referred to Casepoint as the “exclusive” awardee of the Pentagon’s BPA.

Colangelo said Casepoint responded to a market research request for information and then a request for quotes from DOD, ahead of being selected for the contract. 

He also confirmed that the platform does not rely on generative AI models from other companies to run.  

Under the new agreement, Casepoint will provide eDiscovery software as a service (SaaS), support services, and training for the DOD Office of General Counsel (OGC), Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) OGC, and the Defense Legal Services Agency (DLSA), as well as 28 separate DLSA OGC offices supporting multiple missions.

As Colangelo noted, the military’s legal hubs handle large volumes of sensitive and classified data — which need to be addressed quickly, accurately and defensibly — for a variety of high-stakes activities and with loads of resource constraints. 

AI and automation tools can help modernize those operations.

“At Casepoint, AI governance is not simply an IT function; it is a business, legal, security, compliance, and product responsibility. Our AI governance is the framework of policies, controls, processes, and accountability that ensures AI is used safely, responsibly, securely, and effectively within an organization,” Colangelo said.

One major challenge, in his view, is that information is typically fragmented across multiple systems, repositories and departments. 

When agencies receive a FOIA request, face litigation, conduct an investigation, or respond to an oversight inquiry, locating and managing information efficiently can be extremely difficult.

“At the same time, agencies are dealing with increasing data complexity, including email, collaboration platforms, cloud repositories, mobile devices, structured data, and emerging communication channels,” Colangelo said. “Managing this information in a defensible and compliant manner requires modern technology and automation.”

DOD relies on its “Impact Level” classification system to categorize data and securely authorize cloud-based hosting environments and services.

Different federal agencies abide by different security protocols. 

For DOD, IL5 encompasses the highest authorization level granted to environments built to store and process controlled unclassified information (CUI). IL6 marks a rigid compliance standard that is required to process classified data for cloud-based defense workloads. Beyond that is IL7 — the most stringent security classification, which is designed to handle top secret, highly sensitive, or critical national security information.

“Casepoint is the only provider in the industry to offer IL5 or IL6 authorization,” company officials wrote in the press release.

Colangelo clarified that the release was referring to “the eDiscovery and Investigations industry.”

Five federal civilian agencies, in addition to the Air Force, adopted Casepoint’s platform to support legal ops over the past six months.

The company’s announcement includes a statement from an unidentified DOD user who said their litigation team saw a “50-75% reduction in time spent on manual document review leveraging Casepoint’s AI-powered platform, directly freeing up attorney and paralegal capacity for case strategy and analysis” — and that every action was logged and every decision was auditable.