RAG · Legal
RAG and document search for legal teams
Search over a legal archive is useless unless it shows which clause and which page an answer rests on. Zero-Shot builds search systems over contract, case and legislation archives: every answer arrives with a quotation, client-level permissions hold, and superseded text is flagged rather than quoted as current.
What we build
- 01Clause-level search across the contract archive — which agreement contains which provision
- 02In-matter search across pleadings, expert reports, judgments and correspondence
- 03Currency checks that flag amended or repealed legislation separately
- 04A permission wall per client and per matter, closed by architecture rather than by policy
- 05Citations under every answer: document, page, paragraph and date
How it runs
01
Separate the question types
'Which contracts contain this clause', 'where is claim X in this file', 'what is the current version of this article' need three different systems, and are built separately.
02
Versions and dates
Draft, executed and amended copies of the same contract are separated. Undated documents are not indexed at all.
03
Citation is mandatory
No answer can be produced without a quotation. If the system cannot find one, it returns empty rather than prose.
04
Lawyer-supervised measurement
The correct answers in the evaluation set are labelled by a lawyer inside the firm, so the accuracy claim comes from someone who knows the matter.
What we measure
- Share of questions where the correct clause is the first result
- Number of answers produced without a citation (target: zero)
- Cross-client leak test results (target: zero)
- Number of times superseded text is presented as current
- Time to find the answer to a question
When this is the wrong fit
The system does not give legal opinions and does not replace a lawyer; it finds and shows the document. Final judgement stays with counsel. Firms whose archive exists only as physical files need scanning and labelling work first.
Common questions
Does the system give legal advice?
No. It finds the document, points to the relevant clause and quotes it. Interpretation, strategy and final judgement stay with the lawyer. The boundary is enforced technically: the answer cannot go beyond the quoted text.
Can client data get mixed up?
Permission separation is applied in the retrieval layer before any answer is generated, so another client's document never enters the result set. A dedicated leak test suite runs on every release.
What happens when legislation changes?
Legislative text is indexed with dates and status. Amended articles are flagged and the answer carries a note saying when the text changed. Presenting repealed text as current is tracked as its own error type.
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Last updated: 2026-09-05
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