The augmented lawyer: prepare more thoroughly without delegating judgment

Access to documents does not eliminate error

The danger arises when the presentation persuades before the source is read. A judgment may exist without saying what its summary suggests. A legal text may be accurate but no longer applicable at the relevant date. A foreign approach may be illuminating without being transferable.

The study by Magesh and his co-authors on legal research tools shows that retrieving sources does not eliminate hallucinations. It concerns specific systems and questions: its historical results do not rank the French or Belgian products available today. Its methodological lesson remains useful: check the answer and its references separately. Institutional source and publication [1].

A practical workflow for a case

In France, the Conseil national des barreaux announced a guide to professional ethics and AI on 17 March 2026. Its presentation highlights professional secrecy, competence, caution and independence, among other principles. This professional guidance helps frame the right questions; it neither certifies software nor creates a rule automatically transferable to another bar. Official CNB presentation [2].

Start with an anonymised legal question and use Research Atlas [3] to identify relevant resources. The engine is not presented here as an approved place to upload confidential case documents. Which documents may be shared, and the service's terms, must be examined before any upload.

Then ask your assistant to distinguish four columns: a fact established by a document, a party's assertion, a proposed legal characterisation and missing information. An empty cell is better than an invented date. Ask it to prepare the strongest opposing argument and identify documents that could change your analysis.

For applicable law, return to the official text and full judgment. Légifrance [4], EUR-Lex [5] and CURIA [6] are starting points to assess according to the jurisdiction and subject; they are not three interchangeable AI assistants. A commercial tool should be recommended as the “best” only after testing it against the law, language and tasks actually involved, and examining its confidentiality terms.

Finally, use Research Atlas [3] again to broaden your scholarly or comparative research, always separating binding sources from analysis and proposals.