The problem
Wolters Kluwer Schulinck has long been the leading knowledge source for Dutch municipalities in the social domain: the Participation Act, social support, youth care, civic integration and debt assistance. Its users are municipal staff: caseworkers, quality officers and policy officers who take decisions about residents every day. For a concrete case they needed an answer that combines national legislation, case law and their own municipality's policy. That meant searching thousands of pages themselves or putting the question to Schulinck's legal helpdesk. With staff shortages at municipalities and ever more complex regulation, the pressure grew. At the same time, Wolters Kluwer saw that generative AI would commoditise reliable legal information, and wanted to lead that movement itself, without giving up what the brand stands for, namely being right.
The solution
We built the Schulinck AI-Desk from the ground up. First a data platform in which all knowledge base content, case law and every municipality's policy became structured and current. Then a first prototype, where we quickly learned that summaries helped nobody, because municipal staff wanted answers. Then a long stretch of quality improvement with a golden dataset of difficult cases, an automated evaluation framework instead of opinions by the coffee machine, and Schulinck's lawyers as a permanent part of the team with a daily feedback loop. That produced an AI-Desk where a municipal officer asks a question in their own words and gets a clear answer with explanation, conclusion and clickable sources, aligned with their own municipality's policy. The AI says so when it is not sure, and then refers to the lawyers.
The result
98% accuracy on the golden dataset, in a domain where a mistake has direct consequences for residents. After a closed beta, the commercial launch followed in March 2025. Usage has grown without interruption since and the AI-Desk has been rolled out to more than 100 Dutch municipalities, now across five fields of law. For Wolters Kluwer it is a commercial success and the stepping stone to new AI products. The lawyers who were most sceptical at first are now among the most active users. Together with Dennis Maas, Head of Product at Wolters Kluwer Schulinck, we presented the lessons from this project at the Data Expo: 10 pitfalls of developing impactful AI.
