Correspondence

DIN 5008-compliant letter generation

Business letters in Germany follow DIN 5008 — address field, reference line, date, subject, salutation, body, closing, enclosures, everything in its place. LEGALinhouse generates DIN 5008-compliant letters out of the box. You provide content and recipient; LEGALinhouse lays out the letter in the right form — PDF generation in the background, print-ready.

The recipient address comes from the matter's parties or directly from the courts and authorities directory — no retyping, no typos in the reference number.

AI drafts in matter context

An empty letter is friction. LEGALinhouse generates a first draft at the press of a button — in the context of the matter you are working on. The AI knows the parties, the facts, the contract context and the relevant case law, and writes a draft you edit rather than starting from zero.

Before any AI processing the 3-phase pseudonymization runs: client and opposing-party names are pseudonymized before the language model sees them.

Personality-based tone

A letter lands best when it fits its recipient. LEGALinhouse derives the likely communication preferences of the other party from incoming correspondence and aligns the tone of outgoing letters accordingly — the register, never the substance.

• A suggestion from incoming mail. From an incoming letter the AI assistant estimates the likely communication preferences — a weighted mix of four factual styles (analytical, direct, relationship-oriented, initiative). The suggestion is non-binding and is only stored on the contact after you confirm it.
• Tone only, never the substance. When drafting, tone, structure and length align to the recipient — facts, deadlines, citations and the legal position stay untouched.
• Data protection built in. Only writing style is evaluated — no special categories of data, no diagnosis of the person. The personal profiling is designed to be GDPR-compliant, enabled per tenant only once a data protection impact assessment is on file (off by default), and data subjects can object. Letters to the opposing party carry an additional safeguard.
• Your own employees only with release. No communication profiles are derived for your company's employees, and HR letters are written without personality-based tone — until your administrator explicitly releases it.

The same feature works in RECEPTIONinhouse for reply drafts. In PUBLISH, VOICE and ACADEMYinhouse the idea exists as a pure audience-tone setting — no profiling of anyone, no activation required.

Live dictation (voice-to-text)

Heavy writers dictate. LEGALinhouse has integrated live dictation with streaming transcription — you speak, the text appears in the letter editor in real time. Unlike many web applications, dictation works also in Safari, not only Chrome/Edge — which matters substantially for Mac and iOS users.

Dictation understands legal terminology (case references, paragraphs, court names).

Deutsche Post INTERNETMARKE & postage account

Letters need to go out at the end. LEGALinhouse franks them right at release: you choose the dispatch type, the platform buys the matching Deutsche Post Internetmarke and places it on the letter — for standard letters into the address field, so it shows through the envelope window together with the address; for registered mail and return receipt onto a cover sheet with a scannable barcode.

• Your own Portokasse at Deutsche Post — billing runs directly there, with no intermediary and no markup. Your organisation stores the credentials once, encrypted; the platform holds no postage balance of its own.
• Automatic outgoing-mail entry — every franking creates an entry with status "ready to send" and a tracking number, linked to the matter. You set it to "sent" yourself.
• The stamp stays with the letter — stored permanently and shown on every subsequent print or download.

All dispatch types, the Portokasse setup and the bulk-recipient-postcode edge case are covered on the dedicated Franking letters page.

The AI draft became more reliable

• "Continue generating". Long analyses no longer break off mid-sentence; generation can be resumed until the thought is finished.
• Revise with a review note. A result you did not accept goes back to the AI together with your correction note: the original question, the previous result and your remarks produce a corrected new version. The old version remains traceable as "revised" — the correction path is documented, not overwritten.
• A second document. AI queries and letter drafts can draw on two documents instead of one — the normal case for a letter of claim plus the contract.
• Missing details are now searched for literally in the matter. A draft used to write "…my enquiry [of XX.XX.XXXX]…" although the date sat in an earlier letter in the same file: semantic search finds meanings, not character strings. Dates, reference numbers and amounts are now additionally searched for literally.

Visible on paper: draft status and confidentiality

Draft status and confidentiality level are now recognisable in the printout, not only on screen. A printed draft that looks like a final version on paper is exactly the confusion you do not want.

Correspondence view and "reference" — written exchange without opening a matter

Not every exchange with customers, partners or suppliers is a matter. That already worked without opening one — the connection simply could not be read off anywhere afterwards.

• A "Correspondence" tab on the contact. Everything exchanged with that contact in one chronologically sorted list — letters, imported documents, files and e-mails side by side, each marked as incoming or outgoing and filterable by it.
• "Reference" on letters and documents. You relate one letter explicitly to another — what the reference line ("your ref.", "our ref.") previously only held as text. The reference sits in the letter as a clickable link, optionally with a note such as "reply to". Several references per entry are possible.
• The reverse direction appears by itself. The referenced entry automatically shows "referenced by" — you open a scanned letter and see what answered it, without recording the reference a second time.
• A deleted entry does not tear the reference out. The link remains as a struck-through note carrying its original title; the connection is not lost merely because the target was removed.

Usable immediately, no switch, no credit consumption — it is not an AI feature. Only what you are allowed to see is ever visible.

Templates and letterheads

Letterhead and standard templates (dunning notice levels 1/2/3, termination confirmation, power-of-attorney draft, templates for recurring matters) are configurable per tenant. LEGALinhouse holds these per tenant, and AI drafts automatically pick up the right letterhead — no mixups in multi-tenant setups.

Writing templates in the editor. Letter and contract templates are written in the same editor as your letters — formatted instead of plain text.

• Placeholders with a click. With “Platzhalter einfügen” (insert placeholder) you pick from the catalogue or create a free field. Placeholders appear as blocks that cannot be half-deleted by accident; after saving, a report shows which placeholders the platform does not know.
• More layout — in every editor. Underline, headings, indentation, tables and page breaks. The PDF prints them the same way; the font list offers only fonts that look the same in the PDF.
• A language per letter template. German, English, French or Spanish — the automatic salutation and the written-out date follow it.
• Export. Download your own templates as a Word or HTML file, free of charge, with the “Vorlagen verwalten” (manage templates) permission.
• Word templates. Alternatively, upload a letter template as a Word file with placeholders; a workflow step produces a filled-in Word file in your organisation's layout.

Dismissal letters: the ground decides

For an ordinary dismissal, LEGALinhouse asks for the ground — conduct, capability or operational reasons. Only for a dismissal on conduct grounds does the platform check whether a second written warning was sent at least 14 days earlier. If not, you see a note asking for review by your legal department and can still proceed; this is logged. The deadline for an unfair-dismissal claim follows the recorded delivery (see deadline management).

Framing analysis of incoming letters

An incoming letter carries its effect not only in the argument but in the making: in selection, naming, reference points, attribution, and in what is not there. The framing analysis reads how a letter is written — before any argument lands. Usable on any incoming document: demand letters, terminations, official correspondence, contract offers, opposing pleadings.

The inventory first

Before rhetoric comes the concrete: deadlines set with their start date and stated basis, amounts with the derivation the letter itself gives, announced steps with the precondition named for each. That is the part which goes straight into casework.

Framing devices identified

Each device identified appears with a verbatim quotation, a description of its effect, and a neutral rewording — so you can judge the difference yourself rather than take it on trust. It rests on 121 review rules and 23 described framing devices across two layers: general language and legal correspondence.

Automatic quotation check

Every quotation is checked against the source text after generation. Anything not found there verbatim is marked unsupported in the result. An analysis that misquotes is worse than none.

Open legal questions

What needs legal clarification is collected and returned as “to clarify” — a hand-over to substantive review, explicitly not a replacement for it.

Outbox & audit trail

Every letter lands in the tenant's outbox — chronologically, with status (draft, approved, printed, franked, sent) and link to the matter. Letters can be reset in status; every change is logged in the audit trail. Who sent what to whom and when is traceable — even months later.