Six hours of legal research.
Done in three minutes.
Legal Eagle is an AI-powered, multi-agent legal research assistant built specifically for South African practitioners. Voice-activated. Parallel search across SA case law, legislation, and commentary. Structured legal memoranda in correct SA citation format — with four independent models verifying every citation before delivery.
Legal Eagle is a product of Casewin (Pty) Ltd — a registered South African LegalTech company. Currently finalising the Next.js migration before public launch.
The problem every SA lawyer knows
Legal research is the most expensive invisible cost in legal practice.
A junior associate may spend three to six hours researching a single point of law — cross-referencing case law across the Constitutional Court, SCA, and High Courts, verifying citations, and synthesising findings into a memo. At R3,500 per hour, that is up to R21,000 in billable time on a single research task.
The problem is not the work. The problem is that most of that time is not legal thinking — it is retrieval. Finding the right cases. Confirming the citations are real. Checking the court hierarchy. Formatting the output. Mechanical work that should not require a qualified legal mind.
Legal Eagle automates the retrieval. The thinking stays with the practitioner.
The cost equation
Manual research — 6 hours at R3,500/hour
R21,000
Per research task · Associate time
Legal Eagle — same research task
< 3 minutes
Voice to memo · Practitioner reviews output
At R3,500/hour billing rate, a single research session that saves one hour of associate time covers the full monthly platform cost.
The architecture
Five agents. One pipeline.
No hallucinated cases.
Each stage is handled by a specialist agent with a defined role and a defined scope. No agent improvises beyond its function. The pipeline does not deliver until every verification agent passes the output.
Clarification
3 targeted questions before research starts
Planner Agent
Generates strategic search plan · Pydantic typed output
Up to 15 agents · Simultaneous · < 30 seconds
Writer Agent — Anthropic Claude Sonnet
Synthesises into structured SA legal memorandum · SA citation format enforced at schema level
Three independent models · Different providers · No cross-contamination
OpenAI GPT-4o
Citation Existence Verifier
OpenAI
DeepSeek
Legal Accuracy Reviewer
DeepSeek AI
Google Gemini
Quality Gate
Verified legal memorandum delivered · SA citation format · Court hierarchy correct
The citation problem — and how it is being solved
An AI that invents a case citation in a legal memo is not a tool. It is a liability.
The risk with any LLM in a legal context is fabrication. A model that has learned the pattern of legal citations can generate a citation that looks completely legitimate — correct year, correct volume, correct court abbreviation — for a case that does not exist. A practitioner relying on that citation in heads of argument or a client opinion has a serious problem.
This is a known, documented failure mode. It is not fixed by using a better model. It is fixed by architecture.
The multi-model verification approach
After the Writer Agent produces the memorandum, the output passes through three independent verification agents, each running on a different LLM from a different provider. No provider appears twice. No agent can see another agent's verdict before forming its own. A memo is delivered only when all three pass it.
Citation Existence Verifier
OpenAI GPT-4oOpenAIIndependently searches for every case cited in the memorandum. Confirms each citation exists in the legal record via live web search — not model memory. Any citation it cannot verify is flagged and removed before the memo proceeds.
Legal Accuracy Reviewer
DeepSeekDeepSeek AIReads the memorandum for legal reasoning accuracy. Correct application of precedent, correct statutory interpretation, correct court hierarchy weighting. Does not check whether citations exist — that is the previous agent's job. It checks whether the legal reasoning holds.
Quality Gate
Google GeminiGoogleRuns a completeness and consistency check: does the memorandum answer the original query, are all flagged issues addressed, does the confidence level match the evidence in the analysis. If scored below the quality threshold, the pipeline re-runs the Writer Agent automatically.
The result
A fabricated citation has three independent checkpoints to pass through, each running a live web search to confirm existence. The probability of a hallucinated case surviving all three is structurally close to zero. This is not a prompt instruction — it is an architectural constraint.
Every memorandum includes
A finished memo. Not a list of links.
Legal Eagle does not return search results for the practitioner to read and synthesise. It produces a structured legal memorandum ready for review — in the format expected for inclusion in advice letters, heads of argument, or pleadings.
- Executive summary
- Statement of legal issue
- Full legal analysis with applicable legislation
- Relevant precedents in SA citation format: 2024 (1) SA 123 (CC)
- Court hierarchy weighting: CC above SCA above High Court
- Conclusion with confidence level
- Practical recommendations
- Flagged areas for further research
SA-specific throughout
Citation format
2024 (1) SA 123 (CC) — enforced at schema level
Court hierarchy
CC above SCA above High Court — understood in precedent weighting
Legislation
SA statutes, regulations, government gazettes
FAIS awareness
Financial services regulatory context understood
POPIA handling
Data handling compliant with SA privacy law
Cost tracking
All costs displayed in South African Rand · R50 alert
Delivery channels
SendGrid
Telegram
Text + voice
Voice
VAPI + ElevenLabs
What is changing
Migrating to Claude. Upgrading every layer.
Legal Eagle was originally built on OpenAI GPT-4o-mini. The revamp migrates the core reasoning layer to Anthropic Claude Sonnet — driven by stronger performance on precise, structured output tasks. The verification layer introduces models from three additional providers to eliminate single-provider blind spots.
Tech stack
API
FastAPI + UVicorn
Task Queue
Celery + Redis
Database
Supabase (PostgreSQL + pgvector)
Writer LLM
Anthropic Claude Sonnet
Verifier 1
OpenAI GPT-4o
Verifier 2
DeepSeek
Quality Gate
Google Gemini
Voice
VAPI + Deepgram + ElevenLabs
Messaging
Telegram Bot API
SendGrid
Hosting
Railway (backend) · Vercel (frontend — WIP)
Performance targets
Research to memo delivery
< 3 minutes
Parallel searches
Up to 15 in < 30s
Citations verified
100% — live search
Evaluator first-pass rate
> 85%
SA citation accuracy
> 95%
Voice recognition accuracy
> 90%
Built for
Practitioners who cannot afford to get a citation wrong.
South African attorneys, advocates, legal advisors, and compliance officers who spend billable hours on legal research that could be done autonomously — and who need that research to be accurate, verifiable, and in correct South African format.
Not built for general legal questions from the public, legal advice to consumers, or jurisdictions outside South Africa. Legal Eagle is a practitioner tool.
Use cases
Between appearances
Send a Telegram voice note from court. Receive the full memo by the time you return to chambers.
Complex multi-issue research
Web dashboard with real-time progress tracking. Full history and semantic search across all matters.
Advice letters and pleadings
Polished memoranda formatted for direct inclusion in formal legal documents. No reformatting required.
Ongoing matters
Persistent matter memory. The system remembers context, precedents, and citation preferences across sessions.
Important
Legal Eagle is an AI-powered legal research tool. It does not constitute legal advice and is not a substitute for qualified legal counsel. All memoranda should be reviewed by the practitioner before use in formal proceedings or client advice. SA case citations are verified against live legal sources at the time of research. Practitioners should confirm citations independently before relying on them in formal legal proceedings.
Legal Eagle is a product of Casewin (Pty) Ltd · Centurion, Gauteng · POPIA compliant
Interested in early access?
Legal Eagle is finalising its Next.js migration and preparing for public launch. SA legal practitioners interested in early access are welcome to make contact.
Register interest