Search Legal Documents
legal_searchSearch legal documents across jurisdictions (DE federal, EU, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony) using hybrid semantic + keyword search. Returns ranked results with content snippets, not full text.
Suitable for topic questions and case facts when the relevant provision or decision is not yet known. A known citation is resolved by legal_lookup; several known citations by legal_lookup_batch. Natural-language questions using the documents' terminology usually rank better than keyword lists or doctrinal labels, e.g. 'Wann verjährt ein Schadensersatzanspruch?' or 'Wie sind mehrdeutige Vertragsklauseln auszulegen?'. Ranking indicates textual relevance, not legal applicability or exhaustive coverage. document_kind separates norms from case-law: the three norm subtypes ('statute'/'regulation'/'directive') form one filter class — any of them admits all three, so an EU regulation or directive is never hidden by a reflexive 'statute'. 'decision' restricts to court decisions and drops every norm before ranking, so it can hide the statute that answers a rule question. Without a document_kind filter, norms, case law and guidance can rank together, subject to other filters. This supports mixed questions (norm + its case-law application) and unclear German-vs-EU scope (e.g. data protection: BDSG vs DSGVO). Legislative materials are excluded by default and require explicit scope. A statute law_abbreviation combined with a decision scope ('decision', a decision source_type, court or decision_type) yields an empty set, because decisions carry file-number identifiers, not statute abbreviations; cited_norm filters decisions by the provision they cite. legal://filter_values documents the per-value definitions and the disambiguation list. law_abbreviation and source_type restrict the law and source respectively; when omitted, they add no restriction. Without jurisdiction and language the account's scope applies, named in jurisdiction_scope. legal://rechtsrahmen lists which law governs which domain (EU vs national, substantive vs procedural).
Common mix-ups (which law governs):
Procedural law by jurisdiction: ZPO (zivilrecht), STPO (strafrecht), VWGO (verwaltungsrecht), ARBGG (arbeitsrecht), SGG (sozialrecht), BVERFGG (verfassungsrecht), FAMFG (familienrecht)
AO, ESTG, KSTG, USTG, FGO: AO=procedure, EStG/KStG/UStG=substantive
VVG, BGB: Insurance rescission → BGB §§ 812ff, not VVG
VERSAUSGLG, FAMFG: VersAusglG=substantive, FamFG=procedure
APOG, AMG: ApoG=operation, AMG=drug approval
WEHRPFLG, SG: WPflG=conscription, SG=soldiers
AGG, BETRVG: AGG=anti-discrimination, BetrVG=works council
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| court | No | Filter by court: BGH, BVerwG, BFH, BAG, BSG, BVerfG, BPatG, GmSOGB, Sächsisches OVG, Oberverwaltungsgericht NRW, Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf, Oberlandesgericht Hamm, Oberlandesgericht Köln, Landesarbeitsgericht Düsseldorf, Landesarbeitsgericht Hamm, Landesarbeitsgericht Köln, Landessozialgericht NRW, Finanzgericht Düsseldorf, Finanzgericht Köln, Finanzgericht Münster, Verfassungsgerichtshof NRW, EuGH, EuG. | |
| query | Yes | Natural-language question or case facts, e.g. 'Wann verjährt ein Schadensersatzanspruch?'. Terms used in the relevant legal documents help retrieval. | |
| top_k | No | Number of results to return (default 5). | |
| chapter | No | Narrows to one chapter/section within a law; reduces recall. Only meaningful together with law_abbreviation. | |
| date_to | No | Include results until this date (YYYY-MM-DD). | |
| language | No | Document language: 'de' (documents in German, of every legal order in the scope) or 'en' (currently EDPB/EDSA data-protection guidance only). Omitted, the account's document language applies ('de' unless the account sets another). DE and EN are separate corpora — a document published in both languages has one entry per language under the same abbreviation. 'en' selects the English corpus regardless of the answer language; 'edsa' is published mostly in English. | |
| date_from | No | Include results from this date onwards (YYYY-MM-DD). | |
| cited_norm | No | Restrict results to court decisions that verifiably cite this provision (citation-graph filter, e.g. '§ 573 BGB' or 'Art. 6 DSGVO'). With a case-specific query — e.g. query='Eigenbedarfskündigung Härtefall hohes Alter', cited_norm='§ 573 BGB' — citing candidates are ranked by relevance to the query. A citation does not establish applicability to the facts. legal_find_citing_decisions yields the unranked inventory, newest first. Matching is paragraph-level (Abs./Satz/Nr. are ignored). Only court decisions carry citations, so this filter implicitly restricts to case law — no document_kind needed. For an EU directive both the directive article ('Art. 9 Richtlinie 2011/83/EU') and the national transposition norm ('§ 355 BGB') are valid filters: the directive article matches EU case law (EuGH/EuG) and German decisions citing it directly (richtlinienkonforme Auslegung), while the transposition norm matches the larger body of German decisions applying the transposed rule. The transposition norm covers everyday German case law, the directive article EU-level interpretation. EU regulations (DSGVO, MDR) are cited directly. | |
| source_type | No | Filter by source: 'gii' (German federal laws like BGB, StGB), 'eurlex' (EU legislation, including regulations like DSGVO/DSA, directives and treaties), 'eurlex_caselaw' (EU court decisions, EuGH/EuG), 'rechtsprechung' (federal court decisions, 2010 onwards), 'bverfge' (BVerfG leading decisions from the official reporter BVerfGE, up to 2009 — the reported slice, not every BVerfG decision of that era), 'bverwg' (BVerwG judgments (Urteile) up to 2009), 'bgh' (BGH decisions 2000 to 2009), 'bpatg' (BPatG decisions 2000 to 2009, mostly trademark and patent appeals), 'sachsen_rechtsprechung' (Saxon OVG decisions), 'nrw_rechtsprechung' (NRW higher-court decisions: OVG/OLG/LAG/LSG/FG/VerfGH), 'bayern_gesetze' (Bavaria), 'nrw_gesetze' (North Rhine-Westphalia), 'verwaltungsvorschriften' (federal administrative regulations, e.g. TA Luft, BMGVwV), 'edsa' (EDPB/EDSA data-protection guidance — soft law, not enacted norms; mostly English, see the language parameter), 'dsk' (Datenschutzkonferenz guidance: Orientierungshilfen, Kurzpapiere, Beschlüsse — the German supervisory authorities' reading of GDPR/BDSG), 'gesetzesmaterialien' (legislative materials — Gesetzesbegründung from Bundestag Drucksachen, the legislator's intent behind a federal norm; the corpus includes draft bills that never became law. Materials are opt-in: they appear with this value or document_kind='explanatory_memorandum', not in an unfiltered search). Empty = no source filter. | |
| jurisdiction | No | Jurisdictions to search, one or more: 'de' (all German law — matches federal AND state law, incl. Staatsverträge like the Medienstaatsvertrag), 'eu' (EU), 'de_by' (Bavaria only), 'de_nw' (North Rhine-Westphalia only), 'de_sn' (Saxony only — Saxon state law is not in the corpus, so this matches Saxon court decisions). A value matches its own family only: 'de' adds no EU law, ['de', 'eu'] covers both; source_type='gii' restricts to federal statutes. Omitted, the account's legal order applies — for a German account German and EU law — and jurisdiction_scope names it. | |
| decision_type | No | Filter by decision type: 'Urteil' or 'Beschluss'. | |
| document_kind | No | Filter by document class: the three norm subtypes 'statute', 'regulation' and 'directive' form ONE filter class — any of them admits all three, so they need not be told apart, and an EU regulation or directive is never hidden by a reflexive 'statute'. Three values discriminate: 'decision' restricts to court case-law (how a norm is applied), 'guidance' restricts to supervisory-authority soft law (EDPB/EDSA and Datenschutzkonferenz — authoritative readings of the GDPR/BDSG, not enacted norms and not binding), and 'explanatory_memorandum' restricts to legislative materials (Gesetzesbegründung / BT-Drucksachen — the legislator's intent behind a norm; ratio legis, purpose of an amendment). Materials are opt-in: reachable via this value, source_type='gesetzesmaterialien', or legal_get_materials for one provision, not in an unfiltered search. Empty = no document-class filter: norms, case law and guidance can rank together, subject to other filters. legal://filter_values documents the per-value definitions and disambiguation. | |
| law_abbreviation | No | Restrict to the named document, e.g. 'bgb', 'dsgvo'. A statute abbreviation does not select decisions citing that statute; cited_norm selects those decisions. Omitted or null = no law filter. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
No arguments | |||