Source-supported legal documentation assistant
How can you prototype an assistant that retrieves the right legal documents and answers without going beyond the evidence they provide?
3500 € per session, excl. VAT
In short
Two days, comprising 14 hours excluding breaks, to prototype a legal document assistant using a controlled corpus. Participants organise the sources, configure source-referenced answers, test for errors and define a pilot. The result remains a documentary aid subject to professional validation, with no automated sensitive decisions.
Why this training?
A clause found in an old version can lead to an incorrect interpretation of the file. A document assistant must distinguish between a signed contract, an amendment and a template, rather than merely producing a plausible answer. Text generation does not replace legal analysis. The training establishes answer traceability, abstention when documents are missing and validation by a qualified professional before any operational use. Continuing case study: The fictitious organisation Ordelune Négoce wants to retrieve the termination clauses in its supplier contracts. Its training corpus includes fictitious contracts, amendments and procedures, with contradictory versions and missing annexes. The assistant must identify the relevant documents and flag uncertainties. Transfer to the workplace: Following internal validation, propose a pilot limited to one contract category: a designated legal lead, an authorised corpus, a weekly review of errors and a documented decision to continue, correct or stop.
Objectives of this training
- Define the permitted document-related questions and exclusions
- Structure a corpus with versions and metadata
- Configure a prototype that produces verifiable quotations
- Measure quality using a set of annotated questions
- Formalise the conditions for launching a pilot
Who is it for and what are the prerequisites?
Roles and tasks concerned
- Legal professionals and legal documentation managers
- Compliance managers and AI project managers supporting a legal department
Prior skills
- Have practical experience of generative AI and structured instructions for it
- Be able to read a contract file and distinguish its constituent documents
- Have an authorised and accessible document environment available
What you will work on
Define the document assistance remit
Objective: Separate research from legal advice. Users, admissible questions, exclusions and escalation.
Characterise the documents
Objective: Make versions identifiable. Provenance, status, date, confidentiality and linking of amendments.
Prepare retrieval
Objective: Preserve the context of clauses. Extraction, chunking, annexes and metadata.
Configure responses
Objective: Require evidence and abstention. Document retrieval to augment generation; quotations and limitations.
Build the references
Objective: Establish an evaluation baseline. Simple, ambiguous and unanswerable questions; expected passages.
Measure responses
Objective: Quantify shortcomings in documentary support. Denominators, quotation accuracy and evidence coverage.
Test the safeguards
Objective: Identify dangerous behaviours. Instructions hidden in documents, unauthorised access and contradictions.
Correct and compare
Objective: Verify the effects of corrections. Adjustments to the corpus, retrieval and instructions.
Organise the pilot
Objective: Set a framework for documentary use. Access permissions, retention, updating and human validation.
Present the decision
Objective: Make the case for pilot readiness. Persistent limitations, evidence and trade-offs.
What you take away
- Scope charter and corpus register
- Documented prototype and response instructions
- Annotated test set and results table
- Pilot plan with checks and responsibilities
Method and assessment
- Short instructional sessions followed by immediate practice on the running case study.
- Individual work followed by work in pairs, with participants reviewing each other’s outputs.
- Facilitated group review: what works, what needs correcting and what remains a human decision.
- Preparation: Check the import, search and citation capabilities of the selected environment; provide a smaller corpus if necessary. Prepare only fictitious or anonymised documents and identify a qualified professional to validate the reference answers.
Observable criteria: Every affirmative answer refers to a passage actually present in the correct version. ; Questions without supporting evidence trigger an explicit abstention. ; The rates of substantiated answers, accurate citations and appropriate abstentions are calculated. ; Tests cover contradictions, missing documents and malicious instructions. ; The pilot provides for validation by a qualified professional, restricted access and stopping criteria..
Frequently asked questions
Is programming required?
Not necessarily; the setup depends on the verified capabilities of the authorised environment.
Can real contracts be imported?
The exercises use only fictitious or anonymised cases, within the authorised tools.
Can the assistant decide on a termination?
No: no sensitive decisions are automated; the analysis must be validated by a qualified professional.
Will the prototype be deployed at production scale?
No. Two days prepare you for a pilot; the applicable requirements still need to be checked with your legal department.
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