Mary Glossary: Key Terms Explained

Mary Glossary: Understanding Key Terms

Matter

A matter is your workspace for a case or project in Mary. It contains your uploaded documents, the generated chronology, your matter summary, and any Fact Explorer conversations. Think of it as a digital case file.

Each matter is built around a specific set of documents. For example, a personal injury solicitor might create one matter for a client's workers compensation claim, containing all medical records, employer correspondence, and expert reports for that claim.

Chronology

A chronology is the AI-generated timeline of facts extracted from the documents you upload to a matter. Each entry in the chronology includes a date, a description of the event, a relevance score, and a reference back to the source document and page.

For example, in a family law matter, the chronology might include entries such as "Date of marriage," "Separation date," "Property valuation obtained," and "Parenting order filed" — all extracted automatically from the uploaded documents.

Key Document

The key document is the document you select during matter creation that sets the context for your case. This is typically the document that best outlines the issues in dispute — for example, a statement of claim, instructions letter, or expert report.

The key document's content heavily influences the automatically generated matter summary and, in turn, how relevance is scored. Choose it carefully: the key document cannot be changed after matter creation.

Matter Summary

The matter summary is a text description of the legal issues driving your case. It is initially generated from your key document, but you can (and should) edit it to focus on the specific issues you are investigating.

The matter summary directly drives relevance scoring. A focused summary about specific legal issues (e.g., "liability for slip and fall at commercial premises on 15 March 2024") will produce more useful relevance scores than a broad description of the entire case.

Credits / Page Credits

Credits (also called page credits) are the currency used for processing documents in Mary. The general rule is 1 credit = 1 page. If you upload a 200-page PDF, it will cost approximately 200 credits to process.

Credits are shared at the firm level across all users in your organisation — they are not allocated per person. Admin users can view the credit balance under Settings > Billing.

Detailed vs Concise

When creating a matter, you choose between two formats:

• Concise produces fewer, shorter chronology entries. Best for getting across the key facts quickly, initial case review, and matters with large document volumes.

• Detailed produces more granular entries with additional context. Best for deep-dive analysis where you need comprehensive coverage of every event.

This setting cannot be changed after matter creation. If you want to switch modes, you will need to create a new matter and re-upload your documents (which will use additional credits).

Extension

An extension is the process of adding more documents to an existing matter and re-processing the chronology. Use the "Add More Documents" button to extend a matter. This is useful when you receive additional evidence after your initial chronology has been generated — for example, new medical records arriving for a personal injury claim.

Extensions cost additional credits (approximately 1 per page for the new documents). Your existing manual edits will be preserved when extending a matter.

Consolidation

Consolidation (also called clustering) is the deduplication process that runs after you extend a matter. It attempts to merge duplicate or near-duplicate entries that appear when new documents contain information overlapping with your existing chronology.

Consolidation has significantly improved and duplicates should be extremely minimal now. Some duplicates may occasionally remain after extending a matter, but these can be manually removed.

Views

Views are filtered, saved perspectives on your chronology. They let you create focused sub-chronologies without altering the underlying data. For example, in an institutional abuse case, you might create separate Views for "Medical Events," "Placement History," and "Complaints and Reports."

Views do not cost any credits and can be created, edited, or deleted at any time.

Relevance Scoring

Relevance scoring is the AI-assigned rating on each chronology entry that indicates how relevant it is to the legal issues described in your matter summary. The five levels are:

• Very High — Directly relevant to the core issues in your matter summary

• High — Clearly relevant, supporting context for the core issues

• Medium — Potentially relevant, may provide useful background

• Low — Unlikely to be directly relevant, but included for completeness

• Very Low — Minimal relevance to the issues in your matter summary

Relevance scores are driven by your matter summary. Editing the summary to be more specific about the issues you care about will improve the accuracy of these scores.

Fact Explorer

Fact Explorer is an AI-powered question-and-answer feature that lets you ask specific questions about your uploaded documents. Instead of reading through the entire chronology, you can ask targeted questions such as "What treatment did the claimant receive in January 2024?" or "Were there any prior complaints about the property?"

Fact Explorer searches across all documents in your matter and returns answers with citations to the specific source pages.

Source Insights

Source Insights are document-level summaries that give you an overview of what each uploaded document contains. They help you quickly understand the content of a document without opening it — useful when you have uploaded a large bundle and need to identify which documents are most relevant.

Document Index

The Document Index is a split and categorised list of the individual documents contained within your uploaded PDFs. When you upload a large bundled PDF (for example, a paginated medical bundle containing multiple reports), Mary identifies and separates the individual documents within it, listing each one with its type and page range.

Themes

Themes are topic-based tags automatically assigned to chronology entries. They help you filter and organise entries by subject area — for example, "Medical Treatment," "Legal Proceedings," "Employment," or "Financial." Themes make it easier to navigate large chronologies by grouping related entries together.

Side-by-Side View

The side-by-side view is a split-pane display that shows a chronology entry alongside the original source document page it was extracted from. This lets you verify facts directly against the source material without switching between tabs. Click on any source reference in a chronology entry to open the side-by-side view.

Need Help With a Specific Term?

If you encounter a term not listed here, or need clarification on how a feature works, contact us at support@marytechnology.com.