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The legal research page is where you go when you want to search legal sources directly — browsing results, applying filters, and pulling what you find into your projects. Click Legal research in the sidebar to open it. Before you search, the page shows a short empty state asking you to search across your selected sources. If no legal sources are enabled for your workspace, you’ll see a no-sources message — admins can turn sources on in the admin panel; other users need to ask an admin. After a search with no hits, Saga asks you to try again or adjust filters and sources. At least one source must stay selected — you can’t remove the last source tag.

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How search works

Select one or more legal sources, type your query, and search. What happens next depends on the sources you selected, because different sources interpret your query differently. A badge in the search box tells you which mode is active. Your selected sources are grouped into jurisdiction chips above the results. Open a jurisdiction chip to review its databases. Select or clear individual sources, or choose Select all, to update that jurisdiction without changing sources selected for other jurisdictions. Prompt search lets you describe what you’re looking for in plain language — something like “recent Dutch case law on unfair dismissal during probation.” The source matches on meaning, not just keywords. This is how GenIA-L, Kennisbank, and some Moonlit portals work. Keyword search is the traditional approach: specific terms, boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and exact phrases in quotes. Some Moonlit portals use this mode. Hybrid search combines both — it matches on meaning and specific terms at the same time. This is how Rettsdata, Lovdata, Rechtspraak.nl, and GenIA-L handle queries. If you’re not sure how to phrase what you’re looking for, click Improve prompt before searching. The AI refines your query to help surface more targeted results.

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Narrowing results with filters

Every source has its own set of filters that appear in the sidebar. Date range is available for most sources. Beyond that, the options depend on where you’re searching — institutions and document types for Rettsdata, fields of law for Moonlit and Rechtspraak.nl, tax type for Kennisbank, and so on. When you apply a filter, it appears as a chip above the results so you can see what’s active at a glance. You can stack multiple filters or clear them all to go back to the full set.

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Working with results

Each result shows what you need to evaluate it quickly: title, jurisdiction, date, reference number, document type, and a summary. Results come sorted by relevance, though you can switch to newest or oldest first. Click a result to read the full document. For Rettsdata and Lovdata, the document opens right inside Saga in the side panel — no context switching. Other sources open the original document in a new tab. If a result isn’t relevant, dismiss it. If it is, you have two ways to put it to work. Add to chat drops the document straight into a new or existing conversation as an attachment, ready for follow-up questions. Add to project sends it to the knowledge base of a project you choose, where it becomes long-term context the AI can draw on in chat and grid review. When an entire set of results is useful, Add all results to project saves the full batch at once. You can also use legal sources directly inside a conversation without visiting this page — see Research in chat.