Introducing the Research Assistant
The Desk Reference Research Assistant is now available: AI research on ERISA and employee benefits, built to analyze your questions the way a benefits professional does.
ERISA Benefits Tech was formed to put specialist ERISA knowledge within reach of the people who work with benefit plans every day, at a cost that makes sense for the questions they actually have. The ERISA SKILLs Suite was the first step: the same knowledge, installed in a team's own Claude account for teams who handle benefits questions daily. The Research Assistant is the next. It is built for people and benefits teams with a few questions a week, who want a careful, well-sourced answer without a software project.
What it is
The Research Assistant is powered by Claude, from Anthropic. It is informed by the ERISA Benefits Law Desk Reference, our knowledge base of the federal law of employee benefit plans, and guided by our built-in instructions on how experienced benefits professionals analyze ERISA questions. You ask in your own words, attach your plan document if the answer depends on it, and get an answer that leads with the conclusion, cites the statutes, regulations and case law that govern it, raises the related questions you did not ask about, and sets out what to do next.
How it works
A general AI model knows a good deal about ERISA, but it answers from memory, it does not know which related issues a question raises, and it has not read your plan. The Research Assistant is built to close each of those gaps.
What to think about. The Desk Reference is the Research Assistant's knowledge base: twenty-six Parts on the federal law of employee benefit plans, with each rule stated alongside the statute, regulation, case or agency guidance behind it and each section dated to the law it states. The Research Assistant reads the sections that bear on your question before it answers. Where they sharpen the answer or are more recent than the Desk Reference, it also reads the official sources: the eCFR, the U.S. Code, the IRS and Department of Labor sites and the federal courts.
How to think about it. Our built-in guidance takes a question in the order an ERISA professional would: the kind of plan and employer, whether a controlled group is involved, which agencies have jurisdiction and which facts are missing. It gives statutes and regulations more weight than informal agency guidance, notes where the law is moving, and identifies the related issues a question reveals, such as a qualification failure, a prohibited transaction or a deadline that is already running.
The facts. Attach a plan document, SPD or notice, and the Research Assistant reads it as the facts of your plan, applies the law to it, and tells you which further fact would change the answer. Follow-up questions continue the same conversation, with the earlier questions and answers in front of it.
What you get
An answer usually takes a minute or two, and while it works the Research Assistant shows what it is reading. The result is a short research memo: the conclusion for your situation first, then the analysis with the primary authority for each rule and a link to every source it read, the red flags and points that need checking, and the steps to take next. It closes with the Desk Reference sections it relied on, each with the date as of which it states the law, so that you can read further in the Desk Reference itself.
What to know before you use it
The answers are general information about the law, written by an AI model and not reviewed by an attorney. They are not legal advice, and when a question calls for professional judgment or legal advice, the Research Assistant says so. Each conversation and its documents are deleted 90 days after the last message, or at once when you delete it. Remove Social Security numbers, health information and anything else that identifies a participant before you attach a document. What you put into the Research Assistant is not used to train any AI model.
The Desk Reference
Every subscriber can also read the full Desk Reference: each chapter's analysis, authorities and practice notes, the Subject Index, the Section Finder, the Tables of Cases, Statutes, Regulations and Agency Guidance, and Recent Changes in the Law. The first Part of every chapter, the Contents and Find Your Issue are free to everyone, with no account, so that you can judge the material the Research Assistant works from before you subscribe. The Desk Reference is written by ERISA attorney Erwin D. Kratz, with co-author Kristi L. Hill, and currently states the law as of October 31, 2026.
Where it is going
The Research Assistant is the next step, not the last one. We are continuing to improve it, and we expect to roll out further enhancements that make it easier and more cost-effective to get ERISA answers and, when you need it, actionable advice from counsel. That includes an anticipated integration with legal engagements.
Subscribe
The Research Assistant and the full Desk Reference are $120 a month or $1,200 a year. A subscription is for one person and includes a monthly research allowance. You can cancel at any time from your account page, and your access runs to the end of the period you have paid for. See the Research Assistant.
This post is general information about technology and process, not legal advice. Questions requiring legal judgment should be directed to qualified ERISA counsel of your own choosing.