The problem
The firm's best knowledge is locked in past work nobody can find
Answers often already exist in a prior memo, brief or precedent — but finding them means knowing they exist and where. So work gets redone, and juniors reinvent what the firm already knows.
This assistant searches your knowledge base and permitted sources, and answers with citations you can open and verify — refusing to answer when the grounding isn't there.
Primary objective
Get to the right precedent and prior work fast, with a citation behind every statement.
How it works
Question → retrieve sources → synthesise → cite & verify
Question
Natural-language research query
→
Retrieve
Memos, precedents, permitted sources
→
Synthesise
Grounded answer, no guessing
→
Cite
Open & verify every source
What it does
- ✓ RAG over firm knowledge
- ✓ Citation on every claim
- ✓ Precedent & memo retrieval
- ✓ Refuses when ungrounded
- ✓ Follow-up & drill-down
- ✓ Jurisdiction filtering
Built with
- ✓ Claude with retrieval
- ✓ Vector store over your DMS
- ✓ Permitted-source connectors
- ✓ Citation & passage linking
- ✓ Access-control aware
Guardrails
- ✓ Not legal advice — research aid
- ✓ No answer without a source
- ✓ Respects matter permissions
- ✓ Confidence surfaced
- ✓ Query & access audit log
Under the hood
Answer only when grounded
Retrieved passages are the only allowed evidence; if nothing relevant is found, the assistant says so instead of fabricating authority.
research/answer.py
PYTHON
from anthropic import Anthropic from kb import retrieve client = Anthropic() def answer(question: str, user: dict) -> dict: docs = retrieve(question, acl=user["permissions"]) # access-aware if not docs: return {"answer": "No grounded source found.", "cites": []} prompt = f"""Answer using ONLY these sources. Cite each claim as [n]. Sources: {docs} Question: {question} If the sources do not answer it, say so.""" msg = client.messages.create(model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514", max_tokens=900, temperature=0, messages=[{"role": "user", "content": prompt}]) return with_citations(msg.content[0].text, docs)
Outcomes
Cited
Every statement
Faster
To the right precedent
Refuses
When ungrounded
Access
Permission-aware
Find what the firm already knows
Feeds Document Drafting and Contract Review with grounded precedent.
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