How to work with Repertorium

Repertorium is a corpus of Polish and EU law linked by a citation graph. It gives sources, not advice: it finds a provision or a judgment, points to the exact place in the text and says plainly what it does not know. The legal assessment is yours.

This guide is for lawyers who want to work with Repertorium, not just try it. Connecting, account limits and privacy are on the connector page, so we do not repeat them here.

01Ask in English, search in Polish

The Polish corpus is in Polish. A query in English finds English words, and Polish statutes rarely contain them. We tested it on 3 November 2026: the query Article 415 of the Polish Civil Code returned three treaty documents that contain English text, not the article.

You can talk to your assistant in English. Keep Polish citation forms as they are, or ask the assistant to search in Polish:

Case numbers, Journal of Laws references and EU act numbers (2024/1689, CELEX 32024R1689) work in any language. The EU corpus holds some acts only in English, and the act number finds them either way.

02Three ways in

The console searches. The connector does everything this guide describes: it checks citations, tracks amendments and shows links between documents.

03Before your first question

Paste the confidentiality instruction once. It asks the assistant to send Repertorium only questions about the law, with no client data. The text to copy and where to paste it: confidentiality instruction for Claude.

Leave matter details out. Searching the law needs no names, companies, ID numbers, amounts or case numbers of matters you handle. Case numbers of published judgments are fine.

04Five rules for a good conversation with the assistant

1. Say "check in Repertorium". Without it, the model may answer from memory, and a model's memory has no locator.
2. Ask for the identifier and the place in the text for every quotation. Every Repertorium result has them (for example saos:205994, characters 4128-4402). A quotation without them has not been checked.
3. List first, full texts later. Every full document you open counts towards the account's daily limit. Ask for a list of hits, choose, and only then open.
4. Give the date of the event when you ask about the state of the law. "In force today" and "in force on the day of the act" are two different questions.
5. Ask what the database does not know. Repertorium has limits in time and in sources. Better to know them before you rely on a statement of the law than after.

The same rules as examples:

05Ten questions Repertorium answers

Each question matches one tool. We give the tool name for reference; the assistant picks it on its own. We checked the examples on the live corpus on 3 November 2026, with prompts in Polish; below they appear in English.

1Where is it? - search

You search by issue, case number, Journal of Laws reference, name of the act or article.

Check art. 415 k.c. in Repertorium.

You get the article from the consolidated text in force (Dz.U. 2026 poz. 795) with the exact place in the text, and next to it the judgments and tax rulings that cite it.

• By default you see only acts in force. Repealed acts do not vanish without a trace - the result says how many were left out. Ask for the full set and you get it.
• For a statute, the result also shows bills amending it that are before the Sejm and legal questions pending before the Supreme Court. Example: for the Labour Code, two questions to the Supreme Court about art. 22¹ and data on an employee's vaccination, both pending.
• EU law is a separate corpus - say "in EU law". A query for "AI Act" returns Regulation 2024/1689 with a warning that the act has been amended and the result carries the original wording.

Tool: search_law

2What exactly does this judgment say? - full text

Open resolution III CZP 41/12 in Repertorium.

The text comes in fragments, each with its position. For a Polish judgment you get an indirect risk signal (described below, under less obvious uses); for a statute, the EU acts it implements.

This is the only tool that uses up the daily limit of full documents.

Tool: get_document

3Do these citations exist at all? - citation check

A test: in the case number of a real Supreme Court judgment, II CSKP 112/21 of 15 December 2021, we deliberately swapped two letters, making it II CKSP, and added two correct citations.

Check these citations in Repertorium: III CZP 41/12, II CKSP 112/21, art. 415 k.c.

The test result:

• III CZP 41/12 - found, a Supreme Court resolution of 18 July 2012,
• II CKSP 112/21 (the deliberate typo) - not in the corpus, but Repertorium suggests the correct case number II CSKP 112/21 of 15 December 2021,
• art. 415 k.c. - Repertorium knows of no amendments to this article after the date you check against (today by default).

• Give the date from the brief next to the case number. If the judgment has a different date in the corpus, you get a warning. That is a typical trace of a citation stitched together from two real pieces.
• The corpus is not complete, so a missing case number is a reason to check, not proof. Question 10 shows the coverage.
• You can send just the list of citations instead of the whole brief. The text of the brief then stays on your computer. We store neither the list nor the brief.

Tool: verify_citations

4Who cites it, and is this line of case law still alive? - citation graph

Show from Repertorium the judgments that cite art. 415 k.c.

It works both ways: what a document cites and who cites it. In the "who cites" direction you get the citations broken down by year. A thousand citations from twenty years ago and twenty from last year are two different stories - a single count will not show that.

In the "what it cites" direction, each cited provision has a count of later amendments. That is a warning that the interpretation may have aged, not a conclusion that it has.

Tool: get_citations

5Which text of the act was in force on the day of the event? - act version on a date

Which consolidated text of the Civil Code (Kodeks cywilny) was in force on 1 June 2021?

The test answer: consolidated text Dz.U. 2020 poz. 1740, with no amendments between its cut-off and that day, plus seventeen later amendments, including one Constitutional Tribunal judgment. It is a list of the sources of the wording, not a ready text as of that day.

Scope: acts with a consolidated text published from 2015 onwards.

Tool: act_version_at

6What did this provision say on the day of the offence? - provision text on a date

What did art. 85 k.k. say on 1 January 2019?

The answer carries the text of each paragraph, its period of validity, the statute that gave it that wording, and the consolidated texts that confirm it. Transitional provisions of later amendments come with it. The tool also handles an aggregate sentence: you give the dates of the offences and of the judgments becoming final, and it groups the judgments by the law in force.

Scope: for now only the Criminal Code, art. 85-92a (aggregate penalty). For other provisions, use question 5.

Tool: provision_text_at

7What has changed in this act? - amendment history

Which articles of the Civil Code (Kodeks cywilny) have been amended since 2023?

The test result: 43 changes in 40 articles, each with a date, a type (amendment, addition, repeal) and the amending act. The list also includes changes that will enter into force only in a few years. You can narrow the question to a single article.

These are individual changes, not a chain of versions - the tool says what changed and when, not how it read.

Tool: trace_history

8Where does this EU law in a Polish statute come from? - EU origin

Which directives does the Civil Code (Kodeks cywilny) implement, according to Repertorium?

You get two different relations. Keep them apart:

• implements - according to Poland's notification to the European Commission, with the date and the official journal. For the Civil Code this includes Directive 2019/770 on digital content,
• cites - an EU act named in the text of the statute.

A notification is a declaration by the state, not a conclusion drawn by Repertorium. It can be surprising - the Civil Code's list also includes the anti-money laundering directive. That is how Poland reported it.

Tool: trace_eu_origin

9What does this act repeal, what is it based on, what does it refer to? - relations between acts

Show the relations of the 2018 Personal Data Protection Act (ustawa o ochronie danych osobowych).

The test result: it repeals the 1997 act; notices in Monitor Polski were issued under its art. 34(3); and within the act itself there are cross-references and exceptions between articles. Each relation carries a quotation from the text of the act, so you can check it.

A relation missing from the list does not mean it does not exist. A general clause such as "provisions to the contrary are repealed" names no act, so there will be no such link.

Tool: get_act_relations

10What does Repertorium not know? - limits of the corpus

What is missing from Repertorium, and how far do the sources go?

Repertorium lists its sources with their range of years, the date of the last change to the corpus, and what is missing. Example: Constitutional Tribunal judgments end in 2015. For a single document, the tool shows which of its citations could be linked and which could not - and why.

Ask this before you write "there is no case law".

Tool: what_is_missing

06Less obvious uses

1. Check the other side's brief. Pull the case numbers and provisions out of the opposing party's brief and check them in one go (question 3). Case numbers invented by AI and dates stitched from two judgments show up at once.
2. Your own opinion before it goes out. The same test on your own text. Then ask whether the cited provisions were amended after the dates of the judgments your argument rests on (question 4, the "what it cites" direction).
3. Is the Supreme Court about to rule on my provision? A search result for a statute shows legal questions pending before the Supreme Court, with the question and a link to the case. That is a reason for caution, and sometimes an argument for a motion to stay proceedings.
4. Is the provision before the Sejm right now? Pending bills amending the statute, with the latest stage and a link to the print with its explanatory memorandum. A bill whose last stage is old may be dormant.
5. Is the line of case law alive? Ask for the citations broken down by year (question 4) instead of one number, and for the year of the latest citation. If the latest citation is years old and the corpus reaches the current year, the line has probably died out.
6. Indirect risk in a judgment. For a Polish judgment, Repertorium checks whether it cites an act that is no longer in force, or an article repealed after the date of the judgment. It is a signal to check, not a verdict - the provision may have been cited only in a summary of the grounds of appeal. No signal does not mean "still good law".
7. Aggregate sentence. Give the dates of the offences and of the judgments becoming final; you get the wording of the aggregate penalty provisions and the transitional provisions of three amendments (question 6). Which statute applies is for the court to decide.
8. Regulatory due diligence. Which directives the statute behind a client's business model implements (question 8), and which bills amending it are before the Sejm.
9. Strasbourg in Polish courts. Ask about an ECtHR case by name or application number. Repertorium does not reproduce ECtHR judgments, but gives a link to HUDOC and a list of Polish judgments and EU documents that cite the case. Example: Baka v. Hungary - 17 Polish judgments.
10. Learning to cite. For trainee lawyers: every quotation with an identifier and a place in the text. A model can invent a case number. A quotation with an identifier can be checked against the corpus in seconds - a habit worth teaching from the very first brief.

07How to read the answer

The assistant turns Repertorium's output into plain sentences. These phrases mean something specific - do not read them loosely:

If the assistant does not say any of this and the answer sounds too smooth, ask: "Is this list complete, and what does Repertorium not know here?".

For technical teams reading the raw response: these states are carried by the fields not_in_corpus, undetermined, completeness.floor, tier and indirect_risk. The snapshot field is the name of the dataset, not the date of the content.

08What Repertorium does not do

• It does not write opinions or answer legal questions. The answer is written by your assistant's model. You are responsible for the conclusions.
• It does not assemble a consolidated text as of a date - except for art. 85-92a k.k. It points to the sources of the wording.
• It does not judge whether a brief's argument matches the judgment. It checks whether the judgment exists and whether the date matches. You check the argument in the full text.
• It is not a live feed. We update the corpus incrementally. Question 10 gives the date of the last change.
• It does not see your files or conversations. It receives only the database query, and it only reads.

09Ready-made prompts

Copy, fill in the brackets, paste to an assistant with Repertorium connected.

Check [provision / case number / issue] in Repertorium. Search the Polish corpus in Polish. For every quotation give the document identifier and the place in the text. Show the list of hits first, and open full texts only after I choose.

Check these citations in Repertorium: [list of case numbers with dates, and provisions]. Give the status of each, and where one is not in the corpus, say whether Repertorium suggests a similar case number.

Which consolidated text of [act] was in force on [YYYY-MM-DD], and which amendments came in after that day? Answer only on the basis of Repertorium.

Show from Repertorium the judgments citing [art. N of the act] and how those citations are spread over the years. Is this line of case law alive?

Are there bills before the Sejm amending [statute], and are legal questions about its provisions pending before the Supreme Court? According to Repertorium.

What is missing from Repertorium, and how far do the sources you used in this conversation go?

10Questions

The assistant answers but gives no identifiers.
It probably answered from memory. Write: "Check this in Repertorium and give the identifiers".

The result is empty, or unrelated.
First check the language: an English query against the Polish corpus finds English words, not Polish provisions (section 01). Then ask about the limits of the corpus (question 10). An empty result from a wrongly named filter looks the same as an empty corpus. Repertorium does not guess a case number it lacks - it returns an empty list, sometimes with a typo suggestion.

I got a limit message.
The message says when the limit resets and whether retrying makes sense. Current account limits: connector page.

Can I train a model on this?
That needs a separate licence: Repertorium licence.

What has changed recently?
New sources and features, newest first: what's new in Repertorium. Pages for a specific assistant: Repertorium for Claude, Repertorium for ChatGPT.

Something works differently from what is described here.
Write to [email protected]. We reply on working days.