Capabilities in Workbench
Deep Research in Irys Workbench
Some questions do not have a one-line answer: a regulatory analysis, a statute read across jurisdictions, a survey of secondary sources. Deep Research is built for those, and you get it by running Workbench in Standard mode rather than Quick. It takes one comprehensive pass: it pulls from online legal resources and your matter, synthesizes across them, and returns a structured, memo-quality report. It is slower than Quick on purpose, because it is doing the work a quick answer skips.
What you get
Deep Research returns a structured report, not a chat reply:
- A direct answer to the question.
- Supporting analysis organized by sub-topic or element.
- Aggregated citations to the sources it relied on, gathered at the end.
- A note on open questions or areas where the law is unsettled.
The citations are gathered at the end rather than threaded inline, which keeps the report copy-ready. You can paste it straight into your own work without stripping anything out.
How it works
Ask a research question
Select Standard in the mode selector and ask, for example: what are the defenses to a breach of fiduciary duty claim in New York?
One comprehensive pass
Deep Research draws on the documents in your matter, public legal resources and government sites on the web, and online federal and state statutes, and synthesizes across all of them in a single pass. There is no back-and-forth investigation loop. That step-by-step pursuit of leads is what Thorough mode does.
A structured report
The result is the memo-quality write-up above: answer, analysis, aggregated citations, and open questions.
Verifying the report
Because Deep Research gathers its citations at the end rather than checking each one against source as it writes, run a citation check on the report to check those authorities against legal data sources before you rely on it. Treat the two as a paired workflow: Deep Research produces the report, the citation check flags the ones that show a problem. Read every cited authority yourself regardless of status.
For a question that turns heavily on case law, Thorough is the better starting point. It checks case-law citations against source as part of the investigation and threads them inline.
When to use Deep Research
Reach for Standard when you want one thorough, memo-quality write-up, or solid coverage of a statute, regulation, or legal topic.
When not to use Deep Research
- You need a quick answer or a short draft. Quick is faster and the right shape.
- The question turns sharply on case law and the answer has to hold up against a court. Thorough's inline-cited memo and citation checking fit the job better.
- You are working a matter with hundreds of documents and need a document-by-document read. Thorough reads selectively across large matters; Deep Research is built for a single synthesis pass, not a deep document trawl.
Using Deep Research with the other modes
- Deep Research, then the citation check. Always check the citations in a Deep Research report before relying on them. The two were designed to work together.
- Deep Research, then Thorough for the case law. Use Deep Research to map the legal landscape on a topic (statutes, regulations, secondary sources), then switch to Thorough to pull, check, and analyze the specific cases that drive the answer.
- Quick for follow-ups. Once a Deep Research report is in the chat, drop into Quick for quick follow-up questions. Clarifications stay fast, and the report stays in the conversation as reference.
Switching modes mid-conversation does not rewrite earlier answers. Your Deep Research report stays exactly as written when you move to Quick or Thorough for the next message. See Switching Modes & Sessions.
Working with the report
Download any report as PDF or Word (DOCX), use Save this output to Notes in My Desk to keep it with the matter, or copy it straight out.