What a legal assistant is
A general-purpose chatbot answers every question from the same general knowledge — and invents a source when in doubt. For the work of a legal department, that is not enough. LEGALinhouse therefore does not rely on one AI, but on many specialised legal assistants: for employment law, tenancy law, corporate law, contract law, IT law, data-protection law, tax law and many more areas, each has its own assistant — with its own terminology, the relevant statutes and the argumentation structure typical of that field.
When you ask a question or open a case, LEGALinhouse automatically selects the assistant responsible for the subject matter — much as you would route a question to the right specialist inside a large legal department. That assistant already knows which provisions are relevant and where to look them up.
One central expert system — the heart
All legal assistants draw on the same central expert system. Think of it as the shared library and toolbox that every assistant is plugged into: it holds the German statutes with their individual sections, the decisions of the highest courts, and the tools an assistant uses to look things up, read a contract or prepare a case.
Technically, this system is called the MCP server (after the open "Model Context Protocol" standard). We call it the legal assistant, because that is exactly its job: to assist the AI with vetted legal content. The name is secondary — what matters is what it does: it is the single bridge between the AI and the vetted body of legal knowledge. Every legal answer passes through this system. The AI does not recall its knowledge from memory — where errors and inventions hide — but pulls statutory text and decisions directly from the expert system and writes its answer against those sources.
Why this is the core of the platform
- One truth for every assistant. Whether research, contract review or a letter draft — every function draws its knowledge from the same vetted source. No contradictory answers from different corners of the software.
- Grounded, not guessed. Because every statement traces back to a real entry in the expert system and is shown with its source, every section and case number can be checked directly. Invented sources are the biggest risk of unconstrained AI in a legal context — tying answers to the vetted corpus reduces that risk substantially. It is not a guarantee: this AI can still make mistakes. That is why every result is a draft a human must review — the system supplies the citations that make that review easy, it does not replace it.
- Always current. If a statute is amended or a decision is overturned, the answer changes with it — there is no "frozen" knowledge state from model training.
- Only what you may see. The expert system returns to a user only the cases and documents they are authorised for — the same access rules as the rest of the platform.
- Keeps getting better. The MCP server is continuously updated and extended with new functions — the legal assistants grow more capable with every addition. It keeps getting better.
How this expert system works in detail — knowledge graph, assistant routing, agentic workflows and the citation guard against invented decisions — is described in full in the AI Architecture.
For partner companies
We offer partner companies the option to use the MCP server — the legal-assistant expert system — inside their own software. If this is of interest, get in touch.
What the assistants do
Through the central expert system, the legal assistants have concrete professional tools at their disposal — more than 130 in total across all products. For the legal department, that means in practice:
Typical tasks
- Answer legal questions with sources — the answer names the applicable provisions and the matching decisions, rather than offering a general opinion.
- Review contracts — analyse clauses, flag risks, check against reference documents and the typical requirements of the respective contract type.
- Draft briefs, letters and dunning notices — as sourced drafts for review, never as post sent automatically.
- Research the body of statutes and decisions — full-text and meaning-based search across the entire covered legal corpus.
- Interpret provisions — a structured, fully sourced interpretation of a norm, ordered by the classic methods of interpretation.
- Keep track of cases, deadlines and correspondence — the assistant knows the context of the case being worked on.
Even a well-sourced AI answer can contain errors. Every result is therefore explicitly a draft for review by an authorised member of staff who checks the sources — the system supplies the citations that make this review quick and easy. LEGALinhouse sends nothing on its own and does not replace legal advice; CEAVEO provides no legal advice and no legal services within the meaning of the German RDG.
Neither we nor LEGALinhouse may provide legal advice. What we do: make AI results better, structured and verifiable — so that the professional assessment by a human is faster and better founded.
Areas of law & jurisdictions
For the German legal market, 19 German legal assistants are available, covering the practice-relevant fields — from employment, tenancy and corporate law through contract, IT and data-protection law to tax, construction, energy and telecommunications law. In addition, there are assistant profiles for further jurisdictions (including Austria, Switzerland and EU law) — more than 140 profiles in total.
Which statutes and areas of law are actually held is shown on the Legal coverage page. The product focus today is the German legal market; the DACH expansion follows once the respective statutes and case law are fully integrated.
Functions requiring attorney control
Some assistant functions are especially advice-adjacent — for example, drafting a legal line of argument. LEGALinhouse only unlocks such advanced functions once a licensed attorney (Rechtsanwalt) in your organisation has assumed control and legal responsibility for the AI drafts.
Important to understand
- The attorney is your own qualified professional — in-house or an external counsel of your choosing. CEAVEO itself provides no attorneys and no legal advice.
- The core functions — research, case and contract management, sourced drafts for review — are available without this activation.
- Even with attorney control, every AI result remains a draft that a human reviews and takes responsibility for.
Why we deliberately draw this line, and how the split works in detail, is explained on the RDG and limits page.
Why this is the heart of it
The difference between an impressive demo and a tool a legal department can trust day to day lies precisely in this central expert system. It is the reason LEGALinhouse can name sources instead of guessing, why all assistants share the same vetted knowledge base, and why the system stays current without being retrained.
Want to go deeper? Read how the expert system builds hallucination-free legal AI in the AI Architecture — or see which statutes and areas of law are held.