COAPP
by Lawnova
Colorado Appellate Brief GeneratorFiling-Ready Opening Briefs Before Your Next Coffee Break
Let AI handle the heavy lifting — produce C.A.R. 32 compliant opening briefs for the Colorado Court of Appeals with verified citations and automated risk assessment. Every one of the 11 mandatory sections generated to C.A.R. 28/32 and JDF 1935 standards.
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Questions?
Call (970) 423-2818See COAPP in Action
Watch how Blue Shark streamlines your appellate brief workflow from start to finish.
Central Case Hub
Your command center for managing appellate cases. See all your cases at a glance, track progress, and quickly access any brief in development. The clean, professional interface keeps you focused on what matters most.
- Quick case overview and status tracking
- One-click access to any case or brief
- Professional legal-themed design
Guided Setup & Compliance Review
Create cases with a guided wizard that captures all essential information. Built-in quality checks ensure your brief meets all requirements before export, catching missing sections and formatting issues automatically.
- Step-by-step case creation wizard
- Automatic word count and compliance checking
- Issue tracking with preservation status
Deep Customization Controls
Full control over your Blue Shark experience. Configure your preferred language model provider, fine-tune document search parameters, and customize system prompts to match your practice's needs.
- Multiple provider options (OpenAI, Local models)
- Document search tuning for better citations
- Customizable prompts and templates
A Complete Toolkit for Appellate Practitioners
Everything you need to draft professional appellate briefs efficiently and accurately.
Intelligent Brief Drafting
Produce every mandatory section with sophisticated legal reasoning. Blue Shark determines the correct standard of review, flags preservation issues, and applies Colorado-specific formatting rules without manual intervention.
C.A.R. 32 Compliant
Auto-formatted briefs meeting every Colorado Court of Appeals requirement. 14pt fonts, proper margins, double-spacing, and Certificate of Compliance included.
Document-Grounded Citations
Feed in transcripts and exhibits, then let the AI locate the strongest supporting facts and produce accurate TR/CF/EX citations on its own — ending hours of manual quote searches.
Live Document Preview
Preview your brief exactly as it will appear when filed — page numbers, footnotes, and layout rendered in real time so nothing unexpected reaches the court.
One-Click Court-Ready Export
Download polished documents in seconds with formatting intact, Table of Contents built automatically, and page numbers calculated — ready for immediate filing.
Automated Citation Audit
Each citation is checked against your source documents automatically. A color-coded overlay distinguishes confirmed references from those needing a second look — 79.5% pass verification without attorney intervention.
Continuous Auto-Save
Every edit is preserved with complete version history. Roll back to any prior draft, compare revisions side by side, and track every change — so nothing is ever lost.
Attorney Assignment
Link attorneys to specific cases with their bar number and contact details. Certificates of Service populate automatically, and every brief carries proper professional attribution.
Administrative Controls
Select your preferred AI provider, tailor system prompts, adjust generation parameters, and oversee all active cases — complete administrative authority over the platform.
What Sets COAPP Apart for Appellate Lawyers
Designed around the realities of appellate work — precision, compliance, and speed when it counts.
Verifiable Citation Accuracy
Every citation verified against your uploaded record. No hallucinated cases. No made-up page references. 79.5% of citations verified automatically with clear highlighting for items requiring review.
Filing-Standard Compliance
All 11 required sections in proper order. Automatic C.A.R. 32 formatting. Word count enforcement (9,500 limit). Certificate of Compliance auto-calculated and ready for filing.
Pre-Draft Risk Analysis
Pre-generation analysis identifies weak issues before drafting. Preservation gaps flagged automatically. Authority coverage scored per issue. Make informed decisions before you generate.
Transparent AI Disclosure
AI-generated analysis highlighted in gold. Clear distinction between neutral facts and legal reasoning. Export reports show exactly what needs attorney review before filing.
All 11 Required Sections, Auto-Generated
COAPP generates every section required for a Colorado Court of Appeals Opening Brief. Each section follows proper legal structure with appropriate formatting and citations.
Blue Shark Assistant
Each section is intelligently drafted by Blue Shark, which:
- Searches your uploaded documents for relevant evidence and citations
- Applies proper legal standards and preservation analysis
- Formats output to meet Colorado appellate court requirements
- Highlights generated analysis in gold for attorney review
- NEW: Validates citations post-generation
- NEW: Pre-generation risk analysis
Professional-Grade Infrastructure
Blue Shark combines cutting-edge technology with flexible deployment options to meet your firm's security and compliance requirements.
OpenAI Enterprise
Powered by enterprise-grade language models
Local Processing
Option to run locally for data privacy
Secure & Private
Your case data stays on your infrastructure
Always Available
No internet dependency with local options
Four Steps to a Finished Brief
The journey from raw case files to a polished opening brief — streamlined into four clear stages.
Create Your Case
Enter case details, assign attorney, set up appellant/appellee information and procedural history.
Upload & Analyze
Upload transcripts, exhibits, memos. AI processes and indexes your documents for smart retrieval.
Define Issues & Assess
Add legal issues, link authorities, run pre-generation risk assessment to identify gaps.
Generate, Validate & Export
Blue Shark generates all sections, validates citations, exports court-ready DOCX or PDF.
Available as Airgapped Version
For firms requiring the highest level of data security, COAPP is available as a fully airgapped deployment. Run the entire system on your own isolated infrastructure with zero external network dependencies.
Complete Data Isolation
No internet connection required. All case data remains within your secure network perimeter.
Local LLM Processing
Run Blue Shark with local models like Ollama or LM Studio. No cloud API calls.
Full Infrastructure Control
Deploy on your own servers. Customize security policies, backups, and access controls.
Compliance Ready
Meet strict data handling requirements for sensitive legal matters and client confidentiality.
Colorado Appellate Brief Questions
The rules COAPP is built around, and what the software does and does not do.
What is the word limit for a Colorado Court of Appeals opening brief?
Under C.A.R. 28(g) a principal brief may not exceed 9,500 words. The count excludes the caption, table of contents, table of authorities, certificate of compliance and certificate of service. COAPP computes the countable total on that basis and writes it into the certificate of compliance automatically, so the figure you certify matches the brief you file.
What formatting does C.A.R. 32 require for a Colorado appellate brief?
C.A.R. 32 requires 14-point Times New Roman, Bookman or Garamond type, double-spaced body text, a 1.5-inch top margin with 1-inch left, right and bottom margins, single-sided pages, and numbered pages. COAPP applies these to every DOCX and PDF it exports.
Which sections must a Colorado opening brief contain?
Eleven, in order: case caption; certificate of compliance; table of contents; table of authorities; statement of the issues presented; statement of the case; statement of the facts; summary of the argument; argument, addressing standard of review, preservation and discussion for each issue; conclusion; and certificate of service. COAPP generates all eleven.
How does COAPP prevent fabricated or hallucinated case citations?
Two controls. Record citations are drawn only from documents you upload, formatted as TR (date) p.X:Y-Z for transcripts, CF p.X for the court file and EX p.X for exhibits. Case citations are then audited against the CourtListener database before export and marked verified, ambiguous or not found, so no unverified authority reaches a filing unnoticed.
Does COAPP replace the attorney's judgment?
No. Every passage of AI-generated legal reasoning is highlighted in the editor and in the exported document precisely so a reviewing attorney can see which analysis needs scrutiny. The brief is a draft for attorney review, not a filing-ready document produced without supervision.
Can COAPP run without sending case material to a third-party API?
Yes. COAPP supports local language models through Ollama and LM Studio and can be deployed air-gapped on hardware you control, so privileged material never leaves your infrastructure. Each case's documents and retrieval index are isolated from every other case.
What is JDF 1935?
JDF 1935 is the Colorado Judicial Department's instruction sheet for filing an opening brief in a felony appeal. It sets out the required contents and form of the brief alongside C.A.R. 28 and C.A.R. 32. COAPP's output follows those instructions.
More on Colorado appellate procedure and brief drafting in the COAPP appellate practice blog.
Start Your Next Opening Brief Today
Generate court-compliant appellate briefs with AI-powered drafting, automated citation validation, and pre-generation analysis. All 11 sections. All C.A.R. 32 compliant.
Turn days of drafting into minutes of review.
Questions?
Call (970) 423-2818COAPPby Lawnova© 2026 Lawnova. All rights reserved.
Blue Shark-generated content requires attorney review. Not a substitute for legal judgment.
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