DURATION
Research answered from the law itself
What extended legal research is for, the kinds of question it handles, and why the answers come back attached to a source you can open and read.
Feature guide
4 MINUTES
TYPE
Article
TOPIC
Legal Research
Explore What’s Possible with Laine.
Legal AI that holds itself to the standards of the profession.
Overview
A general purpose model can write a paragraph that reads like law. It cannot tell you whether the case it just cited exists, whether the provision is still in force, or whether any of it applies where your matter sits.
Extended legal research in Laine runs against jurisdiction specific legal sources, LawOracle among them. An answer comes back with the decision, the provision or the precedent it rests on, and you can open that source and read it in full.
What Laine can search for you
The questions that usually cost an afternoon
Court decisions on a point
Name the point and the jurisdiction, and Laine comes back with how courts there have decided it, along with the judgments themselves.
Similar cases
Describe the facts of your matter and ask what resembles it. Useful for seeing how an argument of this shape has been received before.
Whether a case still holds
Give it a case and ask how it has been treated since, including where it has been distinguished, narrowed or overturned.
Precedents in other jurisdictions
Name more than one jurisdiction and the same question is read across each of them, with the differences set out.
Statutes and regulations
Ask which provision governs the point and the wording comes back quoted rather than paraphrased, in the form in force.
Your own precedent bank
Ask how you have handled the issue before and your past work is searched alongside the public sources.
Where the answers come from
The difference between a search and a citation
Jurisdiction specific legal sources are built into the workflow rather than bolted on to it. Case law, statutes and regulations, and your own precedent bank sit behind the same question box, and Laine says which of them an answer came from.
Those sources are the same ones used in drafting, review and editing, so a reference in a clause is checked against real law in the place where you are working, not only in the place where you asked the question.
Three ways to read a document
Writing the question: The three things that change the answer most
A research question works best written the way you would put it to a colleague who knows the area but not the matter. Full sentences, the facts that matter, and nothing you would not say out loud.
Select the jurisdiction
The single thing that narrows an answer most. Name more than one if you want them compared.
Give the facts that matter
Who the parties are, what they agreed, and what has gone wrong. Two sentences is usually enough.
Say what it is for
A note to a client, an argument to run, or a clause to draft. The purpose shapes how the answer is written.
EXAMPLE
Tumbleweed Holdings sold its logistics arm to Yarnwell Ventures and kept a 15% stake. Has a court here enforced a non compete against a seller in that position? I need it for a note to the client.
Read the source before you rely on it. Laine shows you where an answer came from precisely so that step is quick.
Still have questions? Our team is happy to help. Write to support@laine.ai.
Ask the question you were about to look up
Give it the topic and the jurisdiction, and read the answer against the sources it cites.