Data sources¶
Lawbster pulls exclusively from official, publicly available sources. No third-party data, no publisher licence required, no opaque licence chain — and the update runs nightly, automated.
Overview¶
| Source | Content | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| German federal law | BGB, StGB, HGB, AO, EStG, GewO, AGG, KSchG, ArbZG, MiLoG, … | Daily |
| EU law | GDPR, AI Act, MiCA, NIS2, regulations, directives | Daily |
| Case law | Decisions of the federal courts | Daily |
German federal law¶
Source: the official federal-law portal. Coverage:
- Civil: BGB, ZPO, HGB, AktG, GmbHG
- Criminal: StGB, StPO
- Tax: AO, EStG, KStG, UStG, GewStG
- Social: SGB I to SGB XII
- Labour: KSchG, ArbZG, MiLoG, AGG, BetrVG, TVG
- Data protection: BDSG (GDPR itself sits in the EU corpus)
- Traffic, IT, tenancy, succession
Hierarchy is co-indexed — book, section, title are carried along as context so a bot can locate a norm within its statutory context.
EU law¶
Source: the official EU legal database. Coverage:
- GDPR, AI Act, MiCA, DORA, NIS2
- Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act
- Data Act, Data Governance Act
- many more regulations, directives, decisions
Language: Lawbster indexes the German version of EU law.
CJEU case law is queryable as its own source (case numbers like C-311/18, T-451/20).
Federal court decisions¶
Source: the official federal case-law portal. Coverage:
| Court | Abbr | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| Federal Court of Justice | BGH | Civil & criminal |
| Federal Constitutional Court | BVerfG | Constitutional |
| Federal Labour Court | BAG | Labour |
| Federal Social Court | BSG | Social security |
| Federal Patent Court | BPatG | Patent & trademark |
| Federal Fiscal Court | BFH | Tax & customs |
Reverse index: which norm was cited by which decision? This link is built at index time and powers the legal_find_citing_decisions tool.
What every hit carries¶
- Full text of the norm or decision
- Stable norm ID and citation
- Hierarchy path within the statute
- Version date and date of last change
- Direct URL to the official source — the user can always verify
Update cycle¶
A nightly automated ingest picks up changed documents, re-reads and updates the index. On error, the data stays consistent — the next run picks up missing updates. No data loss, no manual intervention.