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Why AI invents Dutch case law, and what we did about it

Beau Jonkhout

AI assistants often invent non-existent ECLIs. We built rechtspraak-mcp: an open-source connector that pulls real Dutch rulings from the official Rechtspraak Open Data into any AI assistant.

Why AI invents Dutch case law, and what we did about it

Ask an AI assistant for a Dutch Supreme Court ruling and you'll often get back a plausible-looking ECLI that doesn't exist. For a lawyer that's useless, and dangerous.

The problem isn't the model; it's the connection to the source. There was no ready-made, open way to connect AI agents to the official Open Data of the Dutch judiciary (Rechtspraak). So we built one, and open-sourced it.

rechtspraak-mcp

rechtspraak-mcp is an open-source connector (MIT) built on the Model Context Protocol. Any MCP-compatible assistant (Claude, Cursor, and more) can use it to:

  • search Dutch case law (by legal area, court and date);
  • fetch the full text by ECLI, straight from the official source;
  • see the formal relations between rulings (conclusie, cassation, citations).

No API key. One command: npx rechtspraak-mcp. It's on npm, in the official MCP registry, and on GitHub.

Why open source?

Reliable access to public legal sources shouldn't be a walled garden. Everyone in the Dutch legal-tech ecosystem may build on it, competitors included. The hard part (turning a raw ruling into a sourced answer a lawyer can trust) is what we build LEO for. Open infrastructure, closed where it adds value.

Try it

Search Dutch case law at prudai.com/jurisprudentie, or read the code at github.com/Prudai/rechtspraak-mcp.

Beau Jonkhout

Technical Director

Beau is co-founder and technical director of PrudAI. He is the driving force behind the technical architecture of the PrudAI platform. He leads the development of the multi-agent frameworks, manages the developers, and is responsible for the integration quality, security, and privacy by design of all solutions.