What this skill does
Legal Research transforms a plain-language question into a structured research note with cited sources. Instead of spending an hour navigating legal databases, formulating Boolean search strings, and reading irrelevant documents, you describe your legal question in natural language and the skill produces an answer with the key statutory provisions, case law references, and doctrinal commentary identified and synthesised.
The skill is trained on Swiss federal and cantonal law, EU primary and secondary legislation, and key jurisprudence from the Federal Tribunal and the Court of Justice of the EU. It understands how Swiss civil law works — the role of codified provisions, the hierarchy of sources, the weight of Botschaft commentary, and the interplay between statute, doctrine, and case law.
The research note it produces is not a search results list. It is a synthesised answer that applies the relevant sources to the specific question asked, with the reasoning made explicit so you can verify it and build on it.
When to use it
- Getting a rapid orientation on an area of law before advising a client on a new matter
- Identifying the key statutory provisions and leading cases on a specific legal issue
- Checking whether there have been recent developments in an area of law before giving advice based on prior knowledge
- Researching a question for a memo, brief, or client letter and needing the key sources identified efficiently
What you get
A structured research note with: Legal Question (restated precisely), Applicable Legal Framework (key statutes, codes, and regulations), Key Case Law (leading decisions with citations and brief summaries of the holding), Doctrinal Commentary (key academic or official commentary where relevant), Current Position (a synthesised answer to the question), and Caveats and Gaps (areas of uncertainty, recent developments that may be relevant, issues that require specialist verification).
Example prompt inputs
- "What are the conditions for invoking force majeure under Swiss contract law, and have there been any significant Federal Tribunal decisions on this since 2020?"
- "Does GDPR apply to a Swiss company that processes EU resident data exclusively in Switzerland?"
- "What is the current Swiss law position on non-competition clauses in employment contracts, and what are the enforceability limits?"
- "What fiduciary duties does a Swiss company board member owe to minority shareholders under OR Art. 717?"
Why legal-specific AI matters here
Legal research is not information retrieval — it is legal reasoning applied to a body of sources. A general AI will generate confident-sounding answers that may cite non-existent cases or misstate statutory provisions. Whisperit's Legal Research skill is designed for Swiss and EU legal practice, operates with a strong prior toward accuracy over completeness, and flags uncertainty explicitly rather than filling gaps with plausible-sounding fabrications. Where it is not confident about the current state of the law, it says so — and tells you where to verify. Your research data never leaves Swiss infrastructure.