The tutela is the most powerful legal tool any person in Colombia has. It's existed since 1991, protects fundamental rights, must be resolved within 10 days max, and anyone can file one — without a lawyer, without a mandatory format. It's brilliant on paper and terrifying in practice: most people don't use it because they don't know how to draft one. ReclamaAI exists in good part to fix that.
The five mandatory parts
An effective tutela has five blocks. They've been the same for 35 years, every judge knows them, and skipping one drastically reduces the chance of success:
- Header: who it's addressed to (a judge, not the entity), petitioner's data, respondent entity's data.
- Facts: chronological, neutral narration in numbered bullets. No adjectives. No emotions. Just what happened and when.
- Violated rights: which fundamental rights were violated, with the exact constitutional article cited.
- Petitions: what you ask the judge to do. Specific. Not "help me" — "order EPS X to authorize procedure Y within 48 hours".
- Evidence: documents supporting the facts, listed.
Which parts are automatic and which are judgment
Not all parts of a tutela are equal in terms of creativity. Some are purely formal (the header, party data, listed evidence) — that can be composed by a simple function from user data, no error margin and no need for AI.
Other parts — narrating the facts, the legal argument, formulating the petitions — are where AI adds real value. The difference between "I want them to authorize my exam" and "first: order the respondent to authorize and schedule exam X within the non-extendable term of 48 hours" is what separates a tutela that succeeds from one that gets shelved. That translation is editorial judgment, not template work.
The detail that makes the difference: the closing formula
Every tutela closes with a formula: "For the reasons stated above, I respectfully request the honorable judge to...". There are variations, but the structure is standard. What almost nobody includes, and what does make a difference, is the preliminary measure: asking the judge to order immediate action while deciding the merits. For health cases, this can literally be the difference between living and dying.
ReclamaAI detects when a preliminary measure applies (medical urgency, risk to minors, risk of irreversible harm) and includes it automatically. This came from a lawyer friend who tested the beta — I didn't know it was common practice. One of the reasons having input from domain professionals matters.
What Claude does NOT do
There are three things the model never decides:
- Whether the case qualifies as a tutela. That's decided by the wizard according to a hand-written decision tree based on Colombian legal categories. If the case doesn't qualify, ReclamaAI suggests another instrument (petition, appeal, complaint).
- Which entity is the respondent. The user chooses from a pre-populated list of common public entities and EPS health providers.
- The term. A tutela always has 10 days. It's the law. No variation.
The mandatory disclaimer
Every document generated by ReclamaAI closes with an explicit legal paragraph: "This document is a support tool generated with artificial intelligence. ReclamaAI is not a law firm and does not provide legal services. For complex or high-risk decisions, we recommend consulting a legal professional." It's not fine print — it's a visible paragraph at the end of the document. Part of the trust contract with the user.
Why the tutela is the right tool to start with
There are dozens of legal instruments in Colombia. We started with the tutela because it concentrates two things: it's what people most need and what they're least confident drafting. It has a relatively standardized format, short and predictable terms, and a universe of cases where a well-drafted document changes a real outcome. It's where the work pays the most per user.