Getting Started

Semantis AI is an AI-powered legal research platform for South African law. This guide takes you from creating an account to running your first research question.

1. Create your account

Sign up with your email address and a password. Every new account starts with a 14-day free trial so you can try the platform before choosing a plan.

2. Choose a plan

Semantis AI has three subscription tiers, each with a monthly research-query allocation and a growing feature set. Full details and current pricing are on the pricing page; in short:

• Students / Candidate Attorneys — law reports, AI legal research on GPT-5.1, single-judgment Research, Authority Check, Practice Directives, and the daily case-law newsletter.
• Senior Legal Practitioner — the full AI model ladder, unlimited library, plus My Desk: matters, the Matter Room, document drafting, and transcriptions. Our most popular plan.

You can view or change your plan at any time from the Subscription page.

3. Find your way around

Once signed in, the sidebar on the left is your home base:

• Legal Research — the AI chat where you ask research questions. See the AI Legal Research tutorial.
• Law Reports — browse and search the judgment database. See Law Reports & Judgments.
• Legislation — a quick link to the Law Library's legislation collection (opens in a new tab).
• Authority Check and Practice Directives — verification and court-practice tools on every plan, and during your free trial.
• My Desk — matter management and drafting for Senior subscribers. See My Desk & Matter Room.
• My Account — subscription, profile, and password settings.

4. Ask your first question

Head to Legal Research, start a new conversation, and ask a question the way you would brief a junior — for example, "What are the requirements for a final interdict, with recent SCA authority?" The AI searches the judgment database and answers with citations you can follow through to the full judgments.