--- title: "Memory for legal and compliance AI assistants" description: "Memory for legal and compliance AI: how an assistant answers which version of a clause or policy governs today, cites the document behind it, and reports when the record does not support an answer." canonical: https://past.dev/use-cases/legal last-updated: 2026-10-16 --- # Memory for legal and compliance Source: https://past.dev/use-cases/legal A legal or compliance assistant answers questions where the current version is the whole answer: which clause governs after three amendments, what the retention policy required in May, whether this counterparty is under the old terms. Memory for legal and compliance AI has to order versions by date, cite the document behind each answer, and decline when the record does not support one. This page describes what that takes. ## What you are building An assistant over a firm's own documents and the external material it works against. Internally that is contracts and their amendments, policies and their revisions, regulatory correspondence and matter files. Externally it is regulations, regulator guidance, standards, industry codes and counterparty paper. Anything you can send as text with a date joins the same record, so a question can be answered across both at once. It answers questions from lawyers, compliance officers or employees, and every answer it gives is one somebody may rely on. > **Scope** > > past.dev stores evidence and returns it with dates and sources. It does not perform a legal or compliance judgement, and nothing here is a substitute for one. The judgement stays with the firm. ## Why memory decides whether it works - **Three amendments, one clause, no ordering.** The original and every amendment are all retrievable and all plausible. Similarity ranking has nothing that says which one governs today. - **A superseded policy answers as current.** A retention rule revised in June sits in the record beside the version it replaced. Quoting the old one is a finding at the next audit. - **One counterparty, three names.** The MSA, the DPA and the email thread name the same entity three ways, so a question about the relationship answers from a third of it. - **An uncited answer is unusable.** In a regulated review, a claim without the document behind it cannot be relied on, filed or defended. - **A confident guess is the worst outcome.** An assistant that composes a plausible clause when the record holds none has manufactured a term. ## What past.dev provides - **Version ordering by date.** The clause in force is the one supported by the most recent evidence, and every superseded version keeps its own date, so what governed on a given day stays answerable. See [fact supersession](/glossary/fact-supersession) and [validity windows](/glossary/validity-window). - **Citations on every answer**, back to the stored document and the sentence within it, with the date it was written. - **Evidence for grounded answers.** Your application assesses whether the returned sources support an answer and abstains when they do not. - **Matter separation through audiences.** Scope a data point to an audience slug and derive the recall identity from the authenticated user. Manage audiences in the console or with the API. - **Deletion that reaches derived facts**, so removing a source removes what was extracted from it, which is what an erasure request requires. - **A record of every call.** Each request to the developer API is written to the request log with its outcome, including refusals, and the console shows them by project. ## Cost and accuracy Plan for both ingestion and recall volume against the published allowances. Evaluate answer quality with dated source evidence and an application-level abstention policy. See [pricing](/pricing) and [benchmarks](/benchmarks) for current limits and measured results. Accuracy here is not a preference. An assistant that quotes a superseded clause, or invents one, is worse than no assistant, because somebody acts on it. Dated memory and source excerpts let the application verify the selected material before answering. Measured results are on [benchmarks](/benchmarks) with the method at [how to reproduce it](/benchmarks/methodology). Certifications and the data processing agreement are on [security](/security). ## Getting there 1. Send internal and external material to `POST /api/v1/ingest` through the same call: contracts, amendments and policies alongside the regulations, guidance and standards they are read against. Give each the date it was executed, issued or published rather than the date you loaded it. 2. Set an `audience` per matter or per practice area at ingestion, so retrieval separation is enforced in the engine. 3. Call `POST /api/v1/recall` and pass only the returned evidence to the model, so the answer is bounded by what the record supports. 4. Inspect the selected documents and source excerpts. Answer with dates when the page supports it, surface conflicting versions when both are present, and report insufficient memory otherwise. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can it answer what a policy required on a past date? Yes. Every observation is stored with the date it happened and a superseded version keeps its date rather than being overwritten, so the state on a given day is a question the record can answer. ### What stops it inventing a clause that is not in the documents? Recall returns ranked documents with dated sources. Your application must assess whether those documents support the requested answer and abstain when they do not. A successful empty result and a failed request are different outcomes. ### Can a shared assistant reach a matter it should not? A data point names an audience slug. Reads are scoped to the requested identity and its audiences. Create and manage those audiences in the console or with the API. ### Is past.dev giving legal advice? No. It stores documents and returns dated evidence with citations. Every legal and compliance judgement stays with the firm, and the assistant you build on top is yours. ## Related - [Knowledge base](https://past.dev/use-cases/knowledge-base) - [Customer support](https://past.dev/use-cases/customer-support) - [Security](https://past.dev/security) - [Benchmarks](https://past.dev/benchmarks) - [Quickstart](https://past.dev/docs/memory-api/quickstart)