Symio-ai/legal-defense-generator

Model Description

Legal Defense Generator identifies and drafts all applicable affirmative defenses, procedural defenses, and defensive theories given a complaint or claim. It exhaustively enumerates defenses from: common law, statutory defenses, procedural bars, equitable defenses, and constitutional defenses.

Ensures no viable defense is overlooked when drafting answers or responding to claims.

Intended Use

• Primary: Generate comprehensive defense analysis when answering a complaint
• Secondary: Identify defensive weaknesses in plaintiff's own filings (adversarial use)
• Integration: Called during GLACIER Stage 4 when drafting answers and defensive motions

Task Type

text-generation -- Comprehensive defense enumeration and drafting

Base Model

meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct -- Strong instruction-following for exhaustive enumeration tasks

Training Data

Source	Records	Description
Answer Filings (FL, MS, Fed)	~300K	Filed answers with affirmative defenses
Defense Motion Library	~200K	Successful defense motions (MTD, MSJ)
Defense Case Law	~500K opinions	Cases where defenses were successful
FL Affirmative Defenses	~200 types	Florida-recognized affirmative defenses
FRCP Rule 8(c) Defenses	~20 categories	Federally enumerated affirmative defenses
Equitable Defenses	~50 types	Laches, estoppel, unclean hands, etc.

Defense Categories

• Procedural: Statute of limitations, standing, jurisdiction, service defects, failure to state claim
• Affirmative (FRCP 8(c)): Accord and satisfaction, arbitration, assumption of risk, contributory negligence, discharge, duress, estoppel, failure of consideration, fraud, illegality, injury by fellow servant, laches, license, payment, release, res judicata, statute of frauds, statute of limitations, waiver
• Statutory: Immunity provisions, damage caps, preemption
• Constitutional: Due process, equal protection, First Amendment, immunity
• Equitable: Unclean hands, in pari delicto, voluntary payment doctrine

Output Format

DEFENSE ANALYSIS FOR: [Complaint description]

TIER 1 - STRONG DEFENSES (likely dispositive):
1. [Defense] -- [legal basis] -- [supporting facts] -- [key authority]

TIER 2 - VIABLE DEFENSES (preserve for trial):
1. [Defense] -- [legal basis] -- [supporting facts]

TIER 3 - PRESERVE (assert to avoid waiver):
1. [Defense] -- [rationale for preservation]

RECOMMENDED ANSWER STRUCTURE:
[Paragraph-by-paragraph response to complaint with denial/admission guidance]

Benchmark Criteria (90%+ Target)

Metric	Target	Description
Defense Coverage	>= 92%	Identify 92%+ of applicable defenses
Dispositive Defense Recall	>= 95%	Must catch dispositive defenses
Legal Basis Accuracy	>= 90%	Correct legal authority for each defense
Waiver Prevention	>= 98%	Must assert defenses that would be waived if not pled
Human Expert Agreement	>= 85%	Defense list matches expert analysis

GLACIER Pipeline Integration

STAGE 2 (Research) --> defense-generator identifies all potential defenses
STAGE 3 (WDC #1) --> defenses validated by Legal Bench troop
STAGE 4 (Draft) --> defenses incorporated into answer/motion
STAGE 5 (WDC #2) --> verify no defenses omitted that should be preserved

Training Configuration

• LoRA fine-tuning (r=16, alpha=32)
• Epochs: 3
• Learning rate: 1e-4
• Max sequence length: 8192
• Hardware: AWS SageMaker ml.g5.12xlarge

Limitations

• Exhaustive defense enumeration may include low-probability defenses
• Jurisdiction-specific defenses outside FL/MS/Federal may be incomplete
• Does not assess evidentiary support for each defense (that is element-mapper's role)
• Novel statutory schemes may not have all defenses identified

Version History

Version	Date	Notes
v0.1	2026-04-10	Initial model card, repo created