Topic explainers, each one grounded
None can be stored without a jurisdiction level, a jurisdiction, an as-of date and a citation. Review-due is computed from the as-of date on every read, and amendments supersede rather than overwrite.
Works todayLegal information, never advice or representationLegal Information Assistant
Vakil grounds every sentence in a jurisdiction and a date, or it does not say the sentence at all.
There is exactly one table in this product that can hold a statement of law, and no path into it skips naming a jurisdiction, an as-of date and a source. An answer that cannot be grounded is not softened into a guess — it is withheld, and an escalation is recorded — and four capabilities are refused by design because each would produce something addressed to a counterparty, an authority or a court.
What Vakil will not draft is on this page, first
No statement without a jurisdiction and a dateUngrounded answers are withheld, not hedgedNothing addressed to a counterparty or a court
How it works
Ground, ask, prepare.
Three steps, and the second one refuses rather than guesses the moment the grounding runs out.
- 01
Ground
Read a topic explainer or look up a term, and every sentence traces to a statement carrying its own jurisdiction level, jurisdiction, as-of date and citation. Review-due is computed from the as-of date on every read, not stored as a flag someone forgets to update, and no workspace ships with legal content pre-loaded — the source is always whatever the workspace itself supplied.
- 02
Ask
Put a question to Vakil and the answer is only ever built from grounded statements. An answer with no source, a superseded source, or a source from the wrong jurisdiction is refused rather than softened into a guess: the question is marked withheld and an escalation is written recording why, so the boundary leaves a trace instead of a politely worded refusal nobody can audit.
- 03
Prepare
Build a document checklist for hiring, renting or registering, organise a matter's own chronology of what happened and when, and leave a consultation with a paid lawyer better spent — questions ready, facts in order — instead of paying for the lawyer's time to gather what you already knew.
The boundary
Nothing is stored without a jurisdiction and an as-of date.
India makes an ungrounded legal statement sharper to get wrong than most countries: the same transaction can carry a central levy and a state levy, a Shops and Establishments Act is state law, and the Labour Codes are central statutes notified state by state on different dates. There is no column anywhere in this schema you can put a statement of law into without also naming its jurisdiction level, its jurisdiction, its as-of date and its source — because there is only one such table, vakil_statements, and every other table that shows legal text points at it. Amendments supersede a statement; they never edit it in place, because editing would silently rewrite what an answer given last year rested on.
- A statement carries a jurisdiction level, a jurisdiction, an as-of date and a source — all four, or it cannot be saved.
- The specification forbids presenting a state-specific rule as a national default, or the reverse, and the schema is the thing that holds that line.
- Five source kinds exist; the deployment deliberately withholds rather than labels an answer 'unverified', because withholding is the stricter reading and the one that cannot be misread.
- A named enrolled advocate's own words count as a source too — naming the advocate is what turns it from an assertion into grounding.
Refusing is the feature
A stale or superseded source is refused, not softened.
Legal-research-source-finder is grounded structurally, not by instruction: the code checks whether a source is current before an answer can use it, and a superseded or wrong-jurisdiction source fails that check the same way a missing one does. The refusal is a database row, not a sentence in a chat window that leaves nothing behind once the conversation scrolls past it.
- An answer citing a superseded statement is refused the same way an unsourced one is.
- The question is marked withheld_unsourced, and a vakil_escalations row records why Vakil stopped, so the owner can see it happened and act on it.
- Automatic citation verification against India Code is not built yet — grounding today rests on what the workspace itself has entered and dated.
- The jurisdiction-and-authority finder follows the identical rule: with no current forum-mapping statement, it reports unresolved and escalates rather than guessing which office to contact.
Not a backlog item
Four things this product will not build.
Most gaps here are ordinary — a template that needs writing, an integration that needs a credential. These four are not: each would put something in front of someone other than the reader, and the specification's own line is that Vakil produces legal information, never anything addressed to a counterparty, an authority or a court. There is no table for any of them, on purpose — a table existing at all is the thing a later contributor would eventually wire an endpoint to.
- A payment-demand notice addressed to a customer or vendor — delayed-payment-notice-preparation.
- A first-draft response to a notice you received, addressed back to whoever sent it — notice-and-letter-response-drafting-helper.
- A consumer complaint addressed to a consumer forum — consumer-complaint-preparation-helper.
- An offer or appointment letter addressed to a future employee — employment-document-starter-kit.
What it does
Twelve things Vakil does today.
Each card carries its own limit, and the label is derived from the backend's capability module rather than written here.
Terms, defined by your own workspace
Definitions are statements too, so each carries its own jurisdiction and as-of date. No dictionary content ships with the product; the workspace supplies it.
Works todayWhat to gather, before you start
Five fact-gathering checklists, instantiated and tracked, each carrying a copied caveat. About the owner's own papers, not what an authority requires — a shipped statutory list would itself be a statement of law with no jurisdiction attached.
Works todayPresent, unclear or absent — never fair or safe
Term matching against a workspace-supplied reference list, each entry pointing at a grounded clause note. Never says whether a term is fair or enforceable, and recomputed on every read rather than stored.
Works todayPractice areas, not a ranked list
Practice-area categories and Bar Council enrolment-verification guidance only. No directory table, no ranking, no referral fee — complete at that boundary rather than waiting to be extended past it.
Works todayA starting draft, reviewed before it is anything else
Workspace templates render by placeholder substitution with a non-dismissible advocate-review notice, a named reviewer and a last-reviewed date. No template content ships. Generating with keep=true persists a version-snapshotted draft that can be re-read, edited field by field and exported — as plain text, since there is no PDF-rendering library in this deployment.
Works todayOne register for every renewal date
The register, key dates and renewal watch work against our own database and pasted text today. File bodies, encryption at rest and time-limited share links need object storage and an antivirus service.
Needs a credentialA chronology, with no verdict field
Matter files, a chronological timeline, a fixed-template summary and a downloadable plain-text briefing sheet all work with no credential — no field anywhere for merits, strength or outcome. Attaching a file to a matter needs object storage, the same requirement the document vault carries, and fails cleanly with a 503 until that's configured.
Needs a credentialDue dates, computed, not guessed
Due and overdue state and roll-forward on completion are computed locally, and a deadline presented as statutory must cite a grounded statement. No statutory calendar ships; reminder delivery needs a notification channel.
Built, with limitsSourced, or withheld — never in between
Grounding is structural: an answer with no source, a superseded source, or a source from the wrong jurisdiction is refused, marked withheld, and escalated. Automatic citation verification against India Code is not built.
Built, with limitsUnresolved beats a wrong guess
Resolves only against grounded forum-mapping statements the workspace holds; with none current it reports unresolved and raises an escalation rather than guessing. Each lookup gets a receipt id and re-resolves fresh against the current statement library rather than replaying a cached answer. Nothing computed here is stored.
Works todayFacts and questions, ready before you pay for time
Fact capture, a fixed reviewed question set, the answer log and a downloadable plain-text briefing sheet all work with no credential — and so does adaptive follow-up questioning. Each follow-up names the earlier answer that makes it worth asking, so the sequence adapts to what you recorded instead of guessing, and the same answers always produce the same questions. An LLM key only adds more once the reviewed set is exhausted.
Works todayOffer and appointment letters, the same reviewed way
The same substitution-only template machinery as document-template-library, filtered to employment — no generative drafting, no model credential. Labour-law notes are grounded and scoped to the template's own jurisdiction: central notes always show, state notes only for the template's own state.
Works todayInvoice facts and an MSME check — never the demand letter
Invoice facts, a self-declared MSME/Udyam eligibility check, and grounded MSMED Act information all work with no credential. There is still no route that drafts the reminder letter itself: producing a demand addressed to a counterparty is exactly the correspondence this product's boundary rules out, by design, not for lack of a credential.
Built, with limitsLogged and escalated — never a drafted reply
A received notice is logged in pasted text, and a high-risk one — a s.138 cheque-bounce notice, a show-cause notice, a summons, an arbitration notice — is escalated automatically. There is no route that drafts a reply: everything past logging and escalating is correspondence addressed to a counterparty, authority or court, which this product's boundary rules out by design.
Built, with limitsFacts captured — never the filed complaint
Respondent, what happened, amount and relief sought are captured and editable. There is no route that drafts the complaint document itself — filing forum depends on claim value and is periodically revised, and the complaint text is correspondence addressed to a forum, which this product's boundary rules out by design. It links to the National Consumer Helpline and e-Daakhil instead of producing a document.
Built, with limitsSection by section, against your own glossary
Pasted-text documents are split into sections deterministically and matched against the workspace's own grounded glossary and clause notes — the same matching plain-language-clause-flagger already uses, with no credential needed. A plain-English paraphrase per section additionally uses an LLM key when configured. There is no OCR on this deployment: a scanned or photographed document isn't readable, only pasted text.
Built, with limitsWhat to check, not yet the check itself
The Nice Classification's 45 classes ship as reference data, and a search query records exactly what the owner wants checked. No search actually runs yet — there's no client for the IP India Trade Marks Registry, so a query links out to the official search instead of returning a result — and this can never stand in for a professional clearance search, even once it's built.
Built, with limitsThis page still needs a qualified advocate's eyes on it.
Every claim above traces to a route, a model or a status entry in the code, and a test fails the build the moment the two disagree. That proves the page matches the code — it does not prove the boundary is stated correctly as a matter of Indian legal practice. Before this page goes live, a qualified advocate should read the boundary claims specifically, including the four capabilities described as refused by design, and confirm the wording holds up to someone who is not a developer. Saying that here is a trust signal, not an admission.
Before you switch
Ground the question. Bring the answer to a lawyer.
Tell us what kind of legal information your business needs organised, and we will tell you exactly what Vakil can ground today — and where it hands off to a lawyer instead of guessing.
Questions
Straight answers.
Is anything Vakil tells me legal advice?
No. Vakil states legal information — what a statute or a standard clause generally provides — and never what you specifically should do, whether your situation is strong, or anything addressed to a counterparty or a court. There is no column anywhere in this schema you can put a statement of law into without also naming its jurisdiction level, its jurisdiction, its as-of date and its source — because there is only one such table, vakil_statements, and every other table that shows legal text points at it. Amendments supersede a statement; they never edit it in place, because editing would silently rewrite what an answer given last year rested on.
What happens if the law changed since your last source was dated?
The answer is refused rather than given with a caveat. Every statement carries an as-of date, review-due is recomputed from it on every read, and an answer that would rest on a superseded or stale source is marked withheld_unsourced with an escalation row explaining why, instead of being softened into a hedge.
Will Vakil draft a letter or a notice and send it for me?
No, on either half. Vakil can help you organise the facts and prepare questions for a paid consultation, but drafting anything addressed to someone else — a payment demand, a reply to a notice you received, a consumer complaint, an employment offer letter — is refused by design: there is no table for any of them, and a table existing at all would be the first thing wired to a send route later.
Do I need to configure anything before I can start?
No. Topic explainers, the glossary, the document checklist builder, the clause flagger and the practice-area finder all work today with nothing connected. Storing the file bodies in the matter vault needs object storage and an antivirus service, and reminder delivery for compliance deadlines needs a notification channel — both say so on their own card below rather than pretending to work until they silently do not.
Can Vakil recommend a specific lawyer for my situation?
No. The referral directory gives practice-area categories and guidance on verifying a lawyer's Bar Council enrolment — nothing more. There is no ranking, no rating and no referral fee, and deliberately no directory table at all: soliciting or ranking work for named advocates is what a 2024 Madras High Court ruling put on the wrong side of the Bar Council's own rules.
What does a 'grounded' statement actually mean here?
A row in vakil_statements that names its jurisdiction level, its jurisdiction, its as-of date and one of five source kinds — four classes of primary source plus a named, enrolled advocate's own reviewed words. Nothing else in the product is allowed to show legal text that does not point back at a row shaped like this.