What matters is the volume of regulation, not the headcount
A ten-person firm under construction law has the same problem as a ministry — with a smaller budget and nobody tracking the changes full time.
Below are four typical situations and the questions people actually ask in them. If you recognise yourself in one, we can show you Contineo on your own documents.
Small and mid-sized firms
You have directives, product documentation and legislation to comply with — but no in-house counsel and nobody tracking every amendment. Documents sit on a drive, in email and in two people's heads. When one of them goes on holiday, work stops.
What changes
- An answer in seconds instead of digging through folders or waiting for a colleague.
- Knowledge stops being tied to one person.
- You can see which of your directives cite a rule that has since changed.
This is how people ask
The answer cites the specific directive or section and the version in force.
Schools and education
Education law, ministry decrees, the founder's directives, internal rules and school board decisions. Each of those changes at its own pace and at its own time. A new teacher or administrator takes months to get oriented — mostly by asking colleagues.
What changes
- Onboarding shortens from months to hours.
- The front office stops being a bottleneck for routine questions.
- Answers always come from the text in force, not an older file on a drive.
This is how people ask
It distinguishes what the law says from your internal rules — and which prevails.
Associations and chambers
Your own rules sit on top of a statute that keeps changing. Members ask the same things over and over and the answer has to be right — decisions on transfers, sanctions or membership rest on it. A misquoted article is a complaint, not a typo.
What changes
- Members get answers themselves, without phoning the secretariat.
- Every answer is backed by an article, so it can be verified — or challenged.
- Historical wording stays available for disputes about earlier periods.
This is how people ask
These are real questions from our deployment over the Slovak FA's regulations — answers cite article and paragraph.
Banks, multinationals and large enterprises
Group policies are in English, local directives in the national language, and regulation on top changes every year. Someone in the local office cannot tell whether the group policy or the local addendum applies — and asking two colleagues yields two answers. They are also searching in one language inside a document written in another. Internal audit asks the same question, only with bigger consequences.
What changes
- The same answer across branches — not one that depends on who you asked.
- Ask in one language, get an answer from a source in another. Both the meaning model and the language model are multilingual, and every document carries its language as a field, so you can filter or mix.
- Every answer is backed by a document, an article and a version, so it holds up in internal audit.
- Roll a new policy out to hundreds of people without all of them having to read it end to end.
- Deployment in the EU or inside your own infrastructure where security policy demands it.
This is how people ask
The answer separates group policy from local rules and says which one prevails in the given case.
Public administration
Acts, implementing decrees, internal management acts and methodological guidance. Plus a requirement that data must not leave the EU, or that the whole system runs inside your network. Ordinary cloud tools do not make the shortlist here.
What changes
- On-premise deployment or a closed network with no internet connection.
- Documented processing location for every component — for audit and for procurement.
- Access rights follow your existing sign-in, with no new accounts to create.
This is how people ask
Also available in a mode where no text leaves your infrastructure.
Common to all four
Answers always come from your content and state where they came from — the regulation, the article and the version. When the answer is not in the material, the system says so instead of inventing one. That is the difference between a tool you can use to decide something and a tool you can only use for inspiration.
The problem is not finding the regulation. It is knowing which one applies.
Acts get amended, decrees change, an internal directive falls two years behind. Five files with near-identical names sit in a folder and nobody dares say which one is right.
Concretely: Slovakia's Sports Act has been in force since 2016 and has gone through dozens of amendments since. Ask “how does it work today” inside a sports organisation and the answer depends on who you asked and which copy they downloaded. The same holds for construction law, education law and the labour code.
Five versions, one in force
Amendments, consolidated texts, drafts and annexes pile up. Without version tracking, searching is a lottery — and an answer from a repealed text looks just as trustworthy as the correct one.
Internal rules fall behind the law
A directive gets written once and then forgotten. The statute changes in the meantime and the organisation ends up with two contradictory texts — one in law, one in its own rulebook.
A newcomer has no chance
Getting on top of dozens of regulations takes months. So questions go to the one or two experienced colleagues who keep answering the same things — and when they leave, the knowledge leaves with them.
What Contineo solves today
Working and deployed.
- Every document is versioned. Older versions are archived, not deleted — and search skips them by default.
- Answers always come from the text in force and name the exact regulation and article behind them.
- Precedence rules: higher law over lower, specific over general, newer over older.
- Historical wording can be requested explicitly — for “how did this work back in 2019”.
What we are working on
In progressNot part of the deployment yet.
- Automatic tracking of external sources — the statute book and official bulletins update themselves.
- Conflict alerts: an internal directive says something different from the law or implementing decree in force.
- An overview of which of your own rules an amendment touched and need reviewing.
Ready to get your content at your fingertips?
We'll show you Contineo on your own sources.
Get in touchoffice@contineo.app