Draft a personal-injury demand letter from your case records

What a defensible personal-injury demand needs

A demand holds up when every statement in it traces back to a document. Before you draft, make sure the file supports each part:

• Liability facts. How the incident happened and why the insured is responsible, tied to the incident or police report, witness statements, photographs described in the record, or admissions. Address comparative fault if it is likely to come up.
• A treatment chronology. Each provider, the dates of care, diagnoses and the course of treatment, in order. Gaps in treatment are better explained than ignored.
• Itemized special damages. Medical charges by provider and date of service, lost wages backed by employer records, out-of-pocket costs and property damage. Each line should point to a bill or record.
• Policy limits information. What coverage you know about and how you know it. Some states give claimants a way to ask for it before suit. Florida, for example, requires a liability insurer to disclose coverage limits within 30 days of a written request under section 627.4137 of the Florida Statutes.
• A clear demand and response deadline. The amount or a policy-limits demand, what the release would cover, and when the offer expires.

For a section-by-section walkthrough of structure and tone, see the guide to drafting a personal-injury demand letter. This page covers how to produce the draft from your own file and what to check before it goes out.

Two ways to draft it in Draftiro

The Draft demand letter action (all plans)

In a matter's chat, open the command palette and choose Draft demand letter. Draftiro drafts the letter as a document, using the matter's parties, facts and jurisdiction, with a statement of liability, itemized damages and a response deadline. It flags any figure or fact it could not source from the record. The draft lands in the matter's drafts, where it autosaves and keeps version history. On plans with a monthly AI message limit, it counts toward that limit like any other request.

The Demand package workflow (Solo and higher)

The Demand package workflow runs three steps in the background, and each step feeds the next:

1. Extract timeline. The dates and time-sensitive events Draftiro can read in the matter's documents, listed as date, event and source.
2. Summarize facts. A neutral, chronological statement of facts that cites the source document for each material fact and notes gaps you should fill.
3. Draft demand letter. A draft built from the timeline and fact summary, with liability, itemized damages and a response deadline, flagging any figure it could not source.

You can read each step as it finishes and save any step to the matter's documents to edit it. The timeline and fact summary show what the record supports before you commit to a number. Workflows are included on Solo and higher plans; see pricing for current limits.

Where every figure comes from

Draftiro works only from the readable text of the files in the matter. It does not look up medical charges, wage rates, verdicts or coverage anywhere else, and it does not estimate what a claim is worth. When a figure in the draft has no source in the record, the draft is designed to say so. If the fact summary mentions an emergency-room visit but no bill for it is in the matter, the draft is instructed to flag that line rather than supply an amount. Check every figure against the bills anyway.

Two practical limits matter for injury files. First, a scanned record with no text layer may be named as unreadable instead of summarized, so request a text-based copy or run OCR before you upload. Second, long records: an upload indexes a capped amount of text per file, and Draftiro marks a file that was not fully indexed instead of calling it complete. One answer reads a limited amount of the matter: the dozen or so passages that best match the request, or, when passage matching is not available, roughly the first 16,000 characters of each file, which is a few pages of a typical record. Long records are not read end to end in one answer, so for a long treatment history, ask for the chronology provider by provider and check every line against the bills. The upload help page explains what Draftiro can read.

What the attorney must verify

• Medical specials against the bills. Every provider, date of service and charge. Decide whether you are presenting billed or paid amounts; jurisdictions treat them differently.
• Liens and reimbursement claims. Health plan, Medicare or Medicaid, hospital and provider liens. Draftiro knows about a lien only if a document in the matter shows it.
• Policy limits and coverage. Confirm from the declarations page or the insurer's written disclosure, not from a summary of correspondence.
• Time-limited demand rules. Several states regulate time-limited settlement demands by statute. Missouri's section 537.058, for example, sets required contents, delivery by certified mail and a minimum period for the insurer to accept. If your state has such a statute, follow its current text. Draftiro does not check statutes or apply them to your letter.
• Dates and deadlines. Treat the response deadline in the draft as a proposal. Confirm it against any governing statute and against the limitations period.
• Every factual statement. Check each against its source, and decide what to include and how to label the letter as a settlement communication under the evidence rules that apply to you.

Editing and finishing in Word

Drafts export to Word (.docx) at any time. With the Draftiro Word add-in installed, you can open a matter draft inside Word, edit it and save it back to Draftiro, with a conflict guard so a newer version is not overwritten. You can also run a review in Word that inserts suggested edits as tracked changes you accept or reject. The add-in installs from a manifest and is not listed in Microsoft AppSource. Letterhead, fonts and the signature block are finished in Word, because Draftiro works with text, not layout. See Draftiro for Microsoft Word.

Confidentiality

Injury files are full of health and financial information, so upload only what the demand needs. Draftiro does not use your matter content to train AI models. Read how data is handled on the trust page, and review your own ethics guidance on AI tools; our explainer on ABA Formal Opinion 512 is a starting point. For the wider practice-area workspace, see Draftiro for personal injury.