Swiss case law is not a keyword search. A Federal Supreme Court ruling, a cantonal judgment and a commentary do not sit in one box. If you ask a general chatbot for “the leading case”, you often get a fluent paragraph and a citation that does not exist, or that belongs to another canton.
What you need is a Swiss case law AI with sources: every claim tied to a document you can open, in the right language, with the right court. Silex is built for that. It prepares. You verify.
Why Swiss case law is not a keyword search
Federal law, cantonal procedure and official languages split the same legal question into several corpora. A search that works in Zurich may miss the French-language leading case, or treat a cantonal administrative ruling as if it bound the whole country.
Keyword tools also flatten hierarchy. An unpublished cantonal decision is not the same object as a BGer leading case. Doctrine is not the statute. If the tool cannot show you which layer it used, you cannot cite it in a brief.
Example: a tenancy dispute in Geneva. You need cantonal practice, CO rules, and only then any BGer guidance. A generic “AI case law” answer that quotes a German labour case is worse than a slow manual search.
Hallucinated citations vs sourced RAG
Hallucination in legal work is not a poetic extra sentence. It is a fake ATF number, a repealed article, or a quote stitched from two judgments. You only see it if you open the source.
A sourced retrieval setup puts the documents first and the sentence second. The tool searches the legal corpus, not its memory of the internet. Each normative claim carries a link back to the original. You read the passage in context before you reuse it. The legal position stays yours. If a tool cannot show the document, treat the answer as a draft hypothesis, never as research.
BGer, cantons and Fedlex
A usable Swiss workflow always names the layer. Fedlex holds federal legislation in its current wording. BGer and ATF are federal case law, in the language of the decision. Cantonal courts are where procedure and a large part of administrative and tenancy practice actually live. Doctrine helps; it is never a substitute for the ruling.
Silex is designed to reason over Swiss sources and to let you set the scope of a question by canton, field of law and type of source. That is the difference with a general assistant that “knows law” in the abstract. See the Silex product if you want the research path in one place.
Professional secrecy and Swiss hosting
Uploading a judgment excerpt is one thing. Uploading the client memo that sits next to it is another. Professional secrecy does not pause because the interface looks like a search bar.
Before a file leaves the office, you need to know where the servers sit, whether your documents train a public model, and who can open the answer. Silex hosts in Switzerland with Infomaniak. Files in Silo Storage do not train the models and are not shared with other organisations. Access stays with authorised users of the firm.
The FSA guidelines of 14 June 2024 do not ban AI. They recall that secrecy, data protection and independent verification still apply. The security page states the posture in plain terms.
How to analyse a ruling in Silex
Keep the sequence short so the file stays auditable. State the question in plain language, in French, German, Italian or English. Limit the scope: canton, federal or cantonal, case law or statute. Read the sourced answer and open every citation you intend to use. If the file has internal documents (briefs, exhibits, prior memos), use Silo to query them next to the legal sources; each hit still opens the original file. For a thick matter, case analysis can produce a first synthesis, missing items and points of attention. It is a first pass. You sign the position.
Silex also sits in day-to-day tools: research without leaving the matter, including the WinLex and SkyLex integration.
What this is not
Silex does not replace the lawyer, the court or the official reporter. It does not certify that a citation is the one you should plead. It does not decide which minority opinion to follow in a split chamber.
If you need a comparison with a general assistant, start with ChatGPT or Silex and Claude or Silex for Swiss law. For the research database angle, see Swisslex or Silex.
In short
Swiss case law AI is useful only if every claim opens a real source. BGer, cantons and Fedlex are different layers: name them in the query. Client documents stay in Switzerland and do not train the model. You keep the legal judgment. The tool prepares.
Plans start at Solo, CHF 149 per month. Details on pricing. Roles and practice settings: solutions. To try it on a real ruling from your desk, book a demo.
FAQ
Does this work if I search in English?
Yes. You can ask in English. The sources remain Swiss. You still open the French, German or Italian original when that is the authentic text of the ruling.
Can I use a public chatbot on anonymised facts?
Anonymisation is easy to get wrong (dates, unique contracts, a rare canton). For anything that still identifies a client, use a tool under contract, hosted in Switzerland. See also AI and data protection.
Where do lawyers fit in this workflow?
The same method applies in a firm: sourced research, then your argument. The companion piece is legal AI for lawyers. Notaries have a different constraint on authentic instruments: AI for Swiss notaries.
Related: reliable legal AI in Switzerland.
