Search Indian judgments from Claude and ChatGPT

Most lawyers who have tried an AI assistant on Indian law know the moment. The answer reads well and the case name sounds right. Then you spend twenty minutes finding out whether the case exists, and whether the paragraph says what the answer says it does.

Claude and ChatGPT don't have to answer from memory any more. LawLens Search is in Claude's connector directory, and now in ChatGPT's plugin directory too. With it, either assistant can search the judgments LawLens indexes from the Supreme Court, the High Courts and tribunals, read their text, and quote it with a link to each document on LawLens. You get the authority and the court's words, and you can check both before they go anywhere near a draft.

Free, with no sign-in

For a limited time LawLens Search is free to everyone who uses Claude or ChatGPT. There's no LawLens account to create and nothing to sign in to. It's read-only: it receives the searches the assistant sends, not your files, and it doesn't write anything anywhere.

In Claude

1. Open Settings → Connectors.
2. Find LawLens Search in the directory, or go straight to its listing, and choose Connect.
3. In a chat, turn LawLens Search on from the tools menu and ask your question.

On a Team or Enterprise plan, an Owner may need to add it for the organisation first. In Claude Code it's one line:

claude mcp add --transport http lawlens-search https://api-sgn.lawlens.in/mcp

In ChatGPT

1. Open Settings → Plugins.
2. Find LawLens Search, or go straight to its listing, and choose Install plugin.
3. In a chat, type @ and pick LawLens Search, or choose it from the + menu, and ask your question.

On a Business, Enterprise or Edu workspace, an admin may need to enable it first.

Any other client that supports remote MCP servers can use the same address. The connector documentation has the details.

The six tools

The assistant decides which tool to use, so you never have to name one. Knowing what each one does tells you what you can ask for.

search: the quick search

Keywords and quoted phrases, the way you'd type them into any search box: "legitimate expectation" tender. It returns titles and links, and it's how the assistant gets its bearings before narrowing down.

search_legal_documents: the filtered search

This one does the work of a junior who knows every filter. It combines:

• Forum and bench. Court, judge, case type, and a date range down to the day.
• Parties. Petitioner and respondent, optionally matched the other way round too, since the petitioner in the High Court is often the respondent in the SLP.
• Act and provision, together. Ask for Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act and both must appear in the same reference. A judgment that mentions the NI Act on one page and Section 138 of some other statute on another doesn't match.
• Wording. All of these words, any of them, an exact phrase, or words within a few of each other, searched in the facts, the issues, the holdings or the parties.
• Numbers. A neutral citation or a diary number.

It searches statutes too, section by section, and pages through long result lists.

get_search_options: the exact names

Is it "Delhi High Court", "High Court of Delhi" or "Delhi HC"? A filter only works on the name as it's stored, so the assistant asks first. This tool lists the courts, judges, case types, Acts and provisions in the index exactly as they're stored, with a count for each. It's how the assistant gets a judge's name right before filtering by bench.

search_by_neutral_citation: the citation lookup

Give it 2010 INSC 260 and it returns Damodar S. Prabhu v. Sayed Babalal H., with the bench, the date and the parallel SCR citation. No result only means the citation isn't stored against a judgment in the index. It doesn't mean the citation is wrong.

fetch: open the document

The indexed text of any result, with its details: court, bench, date, parties, case type, citations, and the Acts and provisions it refers to. For a long judgment the text may be an excerpt, which is why every result carries its link.

find_in_document: find the paragraph

Ctrl+F for a judgment. Give it up to ten words or phrases and it returns every passage that contains them, verbatim, with the text around each one and a count of how often each term appears. A trailing asterisk catches word endings, so acquitt* finds acquitted and acquittal. This is the tool that turns "the court held" into the court's own words.

One question, start to finish

Here is a question a litigator might bring on an ordinary afternoon:

My client is the accused in a Section 138 complaint. Defence evidence is over and judgment hasn't been pronounced. He wants to pay and compound. What costs will the court impose? Use the current Supreme Court position and quote the paragraph.

Four calls answer it:

1. get_search_options for Acts beginning "Negotiable Instruments", to get the Act's name as the index stores it.
2. search_legal_documents for Supreme Court judgments since 1 January 2025 that refer to Section 138 of that Act and mention compounding or Damodar Prabhu. The first result is Sanjabij Tari v. Kishore S. Borcar, decided on 25 September 2025 by Justices Manmohan and N.V. Anjaria.
3. find_in_document on that judgment for "compounding", "additional 5%" and "7.5%". It returns paragraph 38, verbatim.
4. search_by_neutral_citation for 2010 INSC 260, to set the 2010 guidelines beside the new ones.

In Sanjabij Tari the Court revisited the graded costs it had laid down in Damodar S. Prabhu fifteen years earlier, and halved them. Defence evidence is over and judgment is pending, so your client falls under clause (b):

If the accused makes the payment of the cheque amount post the recording of his evidence but prior to the pronouncement of judgment by the Trial Court, the Magistrate may allow compounding of the offence on payment of additional 5% of the cheque amount with the Legal Services Authority or such other Authority as the Court deems fit.¹

The whole scale, old and new, as a percentage of the cheque amount:

When the cheque amount is paid	Damodar S. Prabhu (2010)2	Sanjabij Tari (2025)
Trial court, early	Nil, if sought at the first or second hearing	Nil, if paid before defence evidence
Trial court, later	10%	5%, if paid after defence evidence but before judgment
Sessions Court or High Court, in revision or appeal	15%	7.5%
Supreme Court	20%	10%

The same judgment directs dasti service of summons in every Section 138 case, service by email and WhatsApp on particulars the complainant verifies by affidavit, and QR code or UPI links in the summons so the accused can pay at the outset. Ask, and the assistant finds those paragraphs too.

Then open the link and read paragraph 38 yourself, with what comes before and after it. That is the step no tool should take for you.

What it won't do

A research tool is only useful if you know where it stops.

• It doesn't tell you whether an authority is still good law. A result means the judgment is in the index, not that it hasn't been overruled, distinguished or stayed. The example above is a case in point: anyone still quoting the 2010 percentages is citing guidelines the Supreme Court has since modified.
• Fetched text can be an excerpt. Read the judgment at its link before you rely on it.
• An empty result proves nothing. Not that a citation is fake, and not that no court has decided the point.
• The reasoning is the assistant's, and the judgment is yours. LawLens Search doesn't call an AI model. It retrieves, Claude or ChatGPT reads and drafts, and you decide what goes into the brief.

Questions worth trying

• Find Supreme Court judgments since 2024 on setting aside an arbitral award under Section 34 for patent illegality, and quote the paragraph where each court applies the test.
• Find Supreme Court judgments on anticipatory bail under Section 438 CrPC from 2020 onwards, and quote what each says about limiting it in time.
• Which Delhi High Court judgments discuss "legitimate expectation" in tender disputes? Give me the links.
• In Sanjabij Tari v. Kishore S. Borcar, find every paragraph on service of summons.

LawLens Search is free while we learn how lawyers use it. If it misses a judgment you know exists, or returns one it shouldn't, write to support@lawlens.in. That's how the index gets better.

1. Sanjabij Tari v. Kishore S. Borcar, 2025 INSC 1158, para 38(b). ↩
2. Damodar S. Prabhu v. Sayed Babalal H., 2010 INSC 260. ↩