What this is about
Legal matters don't stop at national borders. A German freelancer signs a contract with a Swiss client. An Austrian landlord sends a formal warning to a tenant in Berlin. A limited company from Hamburg receives a letter from a district court in Vienna.
Classic lead platforms throw all these cases into one pot and hope that someone, somewhere, is the right fit. We do it differently.
What the engine checks
Before a case is even shown to a lawyer, it runs through a conflict-of-laws check:
- Jurisdiction of the facts — where is the relevant connecting factor? The debtor's registered seat, the place of performance, the consumer's domicile, the location of the property.
- Applicable law — Rome I (contractual obligations), Rome II (non-contractual obligations), the Brussels Ia Regulation (jurisdiction), or national private international law where Switzerland is involved.
- Cross-border flag — as soon as at least two countries are involved, the case is marked as cross-border and enriched with the matching
applicable_laws. - Routing rules — the case is then distributed according to the per-country rules maintained in '/admin/conflict-rules'. Examples: "Consumer dispute DE/AT → primarily a DE lawyer with AT experience", "Tenancy law → exclusively at the location of the property".
What lawyers see
- Only cases that fit your verified jurisdictions. German bar association verification, document upload for Austria/Switzerland — visibility follows verification strictly.
- A cross-border marker on the marketplace card. You see at a glance whether a case is purely a German matter or whether, say, Swiss contract law comes into play.
- A pointer to the relevant conflict-of-laws rules — for example "Rome I, Art. 6, consumer contracts". Saves you the first click into the library.
- A conflict pre-check against your client list runs in parallel, before you even accept.
What clients get out of it
- No dead-end conversations. You don't end up with a lawyer who would love to help but is admitted in the wrong country.
- A faster initial assessment. The question "am I even in the right place here?" is settled before the first contact.
- Clean escalation in dual-jurisdiction cases — for example, when a German proceeding applies Austrian law, this is explicitly flagged in the marketplace brief to the lawyer.
What we deliberately don't do
- We do not decide ourselves which law applies — that is and remains a matter of legal judgement. The engine suggests the most likely combination and makes it transparent for the moment of acceptance.
- We do not route across borders without the corresponding verification. A DE lawyer never sees purely Swiss cases.
- We do not sell cross-border packages as a paid feature. Matching is part of the regular marketplace.
→ For lawyers: /fuer-anwaelte · Start verification: /lawyer/onboarding · How a case reaches you: /news/anwalts-marktplatz-leads-konfliktpruefung
