LexAgent: answers from Dutch law and case law

vragen.ai answers from your own content. That is the heart of it, and that stays. But some questions lean on something that isn't on your website: the text of the law itself, a court ruling or an official publication. We built LexAgent for those questions.

LexAgent is an external source your agent can reach for. Alongside your own knowledge base, your agent also searches Dutch legislation live, from national law to your municipality's bylaws, and quotes from it with a reference to the source. It is an additional service we switch on for you on request.

Why we built LexAgent

Legal questions are exactly the kind of question a language model gets wrong on its own. Research by Stanford (RegLab) shows that general AI models invent something on concrete legal questions in 69 to 88 percent of cases: a ruling that doesn't exist, the wrong article or an outdated rule. And it isn't only the general chatbots. Even AI tools built specifically for lawyers still gave incorrect information in more than one in six cases in follow-up research.

In a legal context, a plausible but wrong answer is worse than no answer. So LexAgent is built on the same foundation as vragen.ai itself: the agent invents nothing, it takes the answer from the official source and cites it. You always see where it came from and you can check it yourself. Add the version that applied on a given date, and you have an answer you can actually rely on.

Four official sources on top of your own

LexAgent gives your agent access to four public, official sources:

• Legislation from the Basiswettenbestand, the texts behind wetten.overheid.nl: acts, orders in council and regulations.
• Local regulations, the texts behind lokaleregelgeving.overheid.nl: bylaws and policy rules from municipalities, provinces and water authorities, such as a general municipal bylaw or an environmental ordinance, in the version that applies now.
• Official publications such as the Staatsblad, the Staatscourant and parliamentary papers: the original decisions and amendments, with explanatory notes.
• Rulings from the Dutch courts, searchable and citable by ECLI.

Your agent searches these sources, reads the relevant passage and uses it to support its answer, just as it does with your own content. It invents nothing of its own: every answer stays close to the text of the source.

How your agent looks something up

An example. A resident asks the municipality's assistant: "The municipality didn't decide on my objection in time. What can I do?" A good answer takes more than one source: the law setting the deadline, and how the courts deal with it. Here is how your agent tackles that with LexAgent.

1. Understanding the question. The agent recognizes a legal question about failing to decide in time under administrative law.
2. Looking up the law. It searches the legislation and finds both the decision deadline (article 7:10) and the penalty payment for deciding late (article 4:17) in the General Administrative Law Act.
3. Taking the right version. It retrieves the version that applies today, so the answer is current.
4. Adding a ruling. It searches case law for a ruling showing how the courts handle a late decision, and cites it by ECLI.
5. Answering with the source. The agent explains in plain language that the municipality usually has to decide within six weeks, that you can then give it written notice of default, and that a penalty payment can start accruing after that. Every step points to its source: the article of law or the ruling.

That same route works for an official publication, a regulation in the Staatscourant for example, or for local regulations such as a municipality's bylaws.

The right version, with the source included

Laws change. LexAgent can retrieve the version that applied on a particular date, so an answer holds up for the moment the question is about. Every answer refers to the source it came from, down to the article or the passage, so you can look it up and check it. That is exactly how vragen.ai handles your own content, now for the law as well.

Try it yourself

Below is an agent with LexAgent connected. Feel free to ask it a specific legal question, about a deadline, an amount or an article of law for instance. You'll get an answer with the source included. Keep it to one clear question; if you want broader research across several laws, request a demo. Note that the sources are Dutch, so questions and answers work best in Dutch.

Who is this for?

LexAgent is most valuable when legal context often plays a part in the questions that reach you. Think of municipalities and other government bodies, or organizations that work with regulation a lot. Your own content stays the basis; LexAgent fills in where the law, a local ordinance, an official publication or a ruling holds the real answer.

Want to try LexAgent, or find out whether it fits your questions? Email service@vragen.ai and we'll set it up for you.