Building Andri with Blokziel: what we learned from our first pilot

When Advocatenkantoor Blokziel agreed to pilot Andri, we thought we knew what lawyers needed. We had the tech. We had the legal databases. We had the reasoning engine.

We were wrong about quite a lot.

What we thought vs. what we learned

We thought lawyers wanted faster research. They do, but that's table stakes. What they actually wanted was to stop re-explaining the same case to the tool every time they started a new conversation. The system needed memory—not just document storage, but actual recall of what's been discussed, decided, and done.

We thought document analysis was the killer feature. It's useful, but the real pain point was simpler: filling out court forms. Blokziel's team was spending 30-40 minutes per dagvaarding copying information from multiple sources into the right fields. Now Andri does that in minutes, and the lawyer reviews instead of types.

We thought citation accuracy was about getting the right case. It's about getting the right paragraph of the right case, with the citation formatted the way that specific lawyer prefers. Dutch courts are particular about this.

The feedback loop that matters

Every week for three months, we sat with Blokziel's lawyers and watched them use the tool. Not demos—actual work on actual cases. When something broke or confused them, we fixed it that week.

This is how we discovered that:

• Lawyers don't search for "contract law"—they search for "6:74 BW in the context of software delivery failures"
• The tool needed to understand which court a matter was headed to, because procedure varies
• Deadline calculations need to account for court holidays, not just weekends

What Blokziel is using Andri for now

Three months in, the firm has integrated Andri into their daily workflow:

• Case preparation: Running initial legal analysis on new matters before the first client meeting
• Form filling: Dagvaardingen and other court documents pull party details and claim amounts from matter context
• Research verification: Cross-checking arguments against current jurisprudentie before filing

The numbers: they're reporting roughly 8 hours saved per week across the team, mostly on tasks that were tedious but time-consuming.

What we're building next

Blokziel's feedback is shaping our roadmap. Top requests: better integration with their document management system, templates for their specific document styles, and more coverage of administrative law procedure.

If you're a Dutch firm interested in joining our pilot programme, reach out. We're looking for firms who want to shape how this works, not just use what's already built.