Legal research for Zambian practice
Ask the Laws of Zambia.
Plain-language questions in, cited answers out. ZedLex reads the Acts as amended and the judgments of the superior courts, pins every claim to its section or its case, then checks each citation against its source.
ZedLex is built and in testing. Early access opens first to a small group of Zambian practitioners.
Can an employer in Zambia dismiss an employee without a disciplinary hearing?
Termination must rest on a valid reason connected to capacity, conduct or operational requirements, and the employee must be heard before dismissal for conduct or performance (s. 52, Employment Code Act, 2019).
Dismissal in breach of the required procedure has grounded damages in the Supreme Court (Chilanga Cement plc v Kasote Singogo, 2009).
Employment Code Act, 2019, s. 52(2), (3)
Chilanga Cement plc v Singogo, [2009] ZMSC 148
How it answers
You ask in plain language.
Name the Act, the case or the facts, as you would to a colleague. Follow-up questions continue the same conversation. Narrow a search to particular courts, years or areas of law when that helps, or switch on Thorough for a harder question and ZedLex may ask you a clarifying question or two before it searches.
It reads the Acts and the judgments.
ZedLex searches its own corpus of Zambian law by meaning and by keyword, looks up a named section or case directly, and follows citations from one authority to the next. Every proposition in the answer carries a numbered citation into that corpus, and the sources sit beside the answer with the passage that was used.
Built on: the Laws of Zambia consolidated as amended, more than 500 Acts and chapters · more than 7,600 judgments of the four courts of record
You check it, source by source.
After every answer, ZedLex checks each citation against the passage it points to and marks any statement the source does not clearly support. Open a source and the cited provision scrolls into view, set like a page of the Act with its pinpoint in the margin; a judgment opens at the paragraph. Each statute text says the date it is current as at and which amendments were applied, so you know what you are reading.
Built on the public record
ZedLex does not search the open web. It answers from a corpus of Zambian law that it built from public sources, and it tells you the state of every text in it.
Statute law
The consolidated statute book: the chapters of the 1995 Revised Edition of the Laws of Zambia and the Acts of Parliament passed since, each rebuilt as amended. Amending Acts are applied in order, and only where their commencement is proven. An amendment that cannot be applied with certainty is flagged on the affected section rather than guessed at, and a superseded Act is never shown as current law. Every text carries the date it is current as at.
Case law
The judgments of the four courts of record: the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Court of Appeal and the High Court. Most exist only as scanned pages. ZedLex rebuilds each into searchable text, records its neutral citation, court, bench and outcome, and links the authorities it cites to their texts where it holds them. The names of children and of victims of sexual offences and gender-based violence are withheld, as the law requires.
Where a judgment carries no protected names, the original scan stays a click away.
Pricing
Every plan covers the whole corpus, statutes and judgments, with the citation check and the source viewer.
Advocate
One practitioner
Chambers
Up to five seats
Firms and institutions
Custom
Site licences for firms, government, the judiciary and universities. Write to us.
Pricing is set with the early-access group.
The early-access group keeps launch pricing.
Who's behind it
ZedLex is built by Luca Campanella, an AI engineer with a master's in computer science from ETH Zürich. He spent the last decade building machine-learning systems, most recently as co-founder and CTO of a European startup whose AI tools lawyers use in their daily practice. He is also a co-founder of Pacarschool, a non-profit project that teaches IT to high-school students, with participating schools in Lusaka and Mansa, which is how a Zürich engineer came to care about Zambian case law.
Questions
What does ZedLex search?
Its own corpus: the Acts of Zambia consolidated as amended, and the judgments of the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Court of Appeal and the High Court. It does not search the open web. Coverage grows as judgments clear the pipeline, and the absence of a source is never treated as proof that a rule does not exist.
How do I know an answer is right?
You check it, and ZedLex makes that quick. Every claim carries a citation, the source opens beside the answer at the cited provision, and a citation check after every answer marks any statement its source does not clearly support. Treat it the way you would a junior's memo: read the authority before you rely on it.
Is this legal advice?
No. ZedLex helps with legal research. It is not a law firm and does not give legal advice; professional judgment stays with you.
Is the statute text current?
Each text says the date it is current as at and which amending Acts were applied. Where ZedLex knows of a later amendment whose text it does not yet hold, it says so on the Act instead of presenting the text as current.
When can I use it?
ZedLex is built and in testing. Early access opens first to a small group of Zambian practitioners. Write to hello@zedlex.com.
Does it cover magistrates' courts or local courts?
No. Coverage is the four courts of record. Subordinate-court and local-court decisions are not systematically published.
Early access
A first group of Zambian practitioners will shape ZedLex before launch. If you want answers you can check against the section itself, write to us.
Email hello@zedlex.com