AI BUILDERS STACK
Case studyInternal RAGLegal

How Calder Legal answers firm knowledge in seconds

Associates were losing 45 minutes a lookup digging through 15 years of case files. A private assistant now answers in seconds and cites the source document.

45 min → 20 s

avg. research lookup

15 yrs

of case files indexed

100%

answers cite a source

4 wks

to production

01 — The problem

The firm's knowledge was unsearchable

Fifteen years of matters, memos, and precedent lived in folders only a few senior associates could navigate. A routine question could cost 45 minutes of hunting — or a knock on a partner's door.

The knowledge existed. It just wasn't reachable when it mattered.

A SINGLE LOOKUP · BEFORE

Search shared drive~10 min
Skim old matters~20 min
Ask a senior associate~15 min
Give up, redo the worksometimes

several times a day

02 — The build

A private assistant that cites its sources

We built a retrieval assistant over the firm's own documents — answers are grounded in the actual files, and every response links the source it came from.

W1

Index the archive

Ingested 15 years of matters and memos with strict access controls — nothing leaves the firm.

W2

Ground every answer

The assistant retrieves the relevant documents and answers only from them, always citing the source.

W3

Tune for trust

Calibrated it to say "I don't have that" rather than guess, then rolled it out to associates.

BUILD LOG — CALDER

> abs build --client calder

Indexing case archive…

✓︎ 15 yrs of matters embedded

✓︎ Access controls enforced (on-prem)

✓︎ Citations required on every answer

Deployed to production. Day 24.

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03 — The result

Research went from minutes to seconds

Associates ask in plain language and get an answer with the source attached. The senior team stopped being a search engine, and nobody's redoing work that was already in the files.

Research lookup

45 min → 20 sec

Answers with a citation

— → every one

Partner interruptions

daily → rare

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