How does a legal AI chatbot avoid making up case citations?
Through strict RAG grounding. The chatbot can only quote from judgments and documents we've indexed. Every citation resolves to a link on Indian Kanoon (or your internal document library) so lawyers can verify the source in one click. On VakeelSaathi we ran hallucination rate from 14% (baseline) to under 1% (production) through four defense layers: hybrid retrieval, reranking, strict grounding prompts, and confidence thresholds. Never trust a legal AI that doesn't cite paragraphs.
Can it search my firm's own case files and precedents?
Yes. This is the highest-value use case. We ingest your firm's memos, drafts, opinions, notes, and past pleadings. The chatbot then answers "have we argued anything like this before?" with citations back to the original file. Deployed on-prem or in your private VPC so nothing leaves your infrastructure.
Does it handle Indian court hierarchies correctly?
Yes. The system distinguishes binding precedent (Supreme Court, applicable High Court on your bench) from persuasive precedent (other High Courts, tribunals). It flags overruled judgments where our data includes the overruling case. Same logic that powers VakeelSaathi's legal research.
Can it draft in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and other Indian languages?
Yes. Legal research runs in English (since Indian case law is in English) but drafting outputs work in 8 Indian languages: Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati. Bilingual legal glossaries ensure terminology consistency.
Is it DPDP Act compliant?
Yes. Deployments run in Indian data centers (AWS Mumbai, Azure India), or on-prem in your firm's server room. When we use foreign LLMs (OpenAI/Anthropic), we sign zero-data-retention agreements. Client data never trains external models. For high-sensitivity firms, we deploy self-hosted Llama/Mistral so nothing leaves your VPC.
How much does it cost?
Prototype phase: ₹2-3 lakh (3 weeks). Full firm build with client intake + drafting + case law: ₹8-15 lakh (6-8 weeks). Ongoing operations: ₹50,000/month including model API costs, weekly judgment refresh, and evals. Free feasibility call to scope your specific needs.