Research jobs (LEO only)

Research jobs are a structured way to do deeper work inside LEO: you define a request and the assistant executes it with visible steps, logs and a deliverable.

Research jobs are only available in LEO. ZIA and VERA rely on chat and do not have research jobs.

When to use research (vs chat)

Use research when you want:

• multi-step investigation,
• transparency (logs/graph),
• a structured deliverable you can export,
• systematic handling of larger source sets (case law, legislation, your own knowledge bases).

Use chat when you want:

• fast iteration,
• smaller questions,
• collaborative prompt refinement.

Overview: job list

The research list typically shows:

• topic,
• linked project (if any),
• status (running/done/failed/…),
• actions (delete, sometimes requeue on failure).

Requeue a failed job

If a job fails, the UI may show a “requeue” hint to restart it.

Tip: adjust your input (topic/constraints) if it repeatedly fails, or contact your admin.

Start a new job

Click “Start research job” and fill in:

• Topic
• Project (recommended)
• Project documents — select the documents the job must use. Leave this empty and LEO automatically picks the most relevant project documents; the timeline shows which were actually consulted.
• Context
• Questions
• Constraints
• Language
• Jurisdictions
• Source families — choose which kinds of sources LEO may consult (case law, legislation, parliamentary materials, your own knowledge bases). Leave it blank and LEO uses a sensible default set.
• Deliverable type
• Additional notes

Practical tips:

• 3–8 focused questions usually beats one extremely broad request.
• Tighter source families and jurisdictions reduce noise in the deliverable.

Job detail page

By default a job opens in memo view: the deliverable is shown at the top, with a compact “brick grid” of cards per research step underneath. From there you can drill down into the timeline, logs and graph view when you need more detail.

A job detail page typically contains:

• status and progress,
• deliverable (Markdown),
• action timeline (which documents and sources were consulted),
• logs (agent output),
• graph view (diagnostics and node progress),
• Run sources: every source consulted during the run, including a snapshot of the URL at the moment of consultation,
• export options (Word/PDF) and sometimes save-to-project.

Stable long-running jobs

LEO actively supervises long research runs:

• the watchdog only counts idle time, so a job that is still actively using tools keeps running,
• a heartbeat mechanism periodically confirms the job is alive,
• if a job does get stuck, you see this clearly in the status and can requeue it.

You do not have to worry that a serious, slow investigation will be cut off prematurely.

Save details and restart research

When you change fields in Job details and click Save details, LEO now shows a confirmation modal asking if you want to restart the research run.

• Choose Restart research to rerun the job with the updated details.
• Choose Not now to save the details without restarting immediately.

Opening sources (case law / legislation)

Deliverables may include references you can click to open a source drawer:

• case law identifiers,
• law/article references (citations or URLs),
• your own documents or items from your knowledge bases.

A single statement may be backed by multiple sources at once; those appear next to each other in the citation and you can open them one by one.

Legislation drawer behavior (law/articles)

For legislation references in the drawer:

• the selected article is highlighted (same visual style as ECLI quote highlights),
• for citations with lid/sub, the selected article heading is highlighted with that selection,
• the drawer auto-scrolls to the highlighted selection,
• you can use Previous/Next to navigate to neighboring articles.

Performance and caching (law/articles)

• opening a large law for the first time can be slower,
• neighboring articles open much faster afterwards due to frontend/backend caching and prefetching.

Follow-up questions and confirmations (HITL)

For research follow-ups, LEO first asks for your confirmation before taking the next step. You see a card with the proposed action and can approve, adjust or reject it. You stay in control of what happens to your file.

Export

You can export deliverables to:

• Word (.docx)
• PDF

More: Export.