Legal Services Act

Legal framework — RDG notice

civitas. is a private service provider — not a public authority, not a law firm. Our service is software: a structured question-and-answer wizard captures your details and uses them to fill in the official application forms in a rule-based manner — based on pre-programmed, standardized case scenarios of the kind the Federal Court of Justice has approved for document generators (judgment of 09.09.2021 – I ZR 113/20, „smartlaw“). In doing so, civitas. does not act in your specific legal matter and does not carry out any legal examination of your individual case; our service is therefore not a legal service within the meaning of § 2 Abs. 1 RDG. Even insofar as individual peripheral elements were to be classified differently, they would remain permitted as an ancillary service to the field of activity of the software-based form-filling assistance pursuant to § 5 Abs. 1 RDG.

01What civitas. does

Structured capture of your details in the question-and-answer wizard

Rule-based completion of official application forms: naturalization (BVA forms EB and EBK) as well as renewal of residence permits (official forms of the federal states and municipalities)

Automated completeness check of the details entered

Creation of individual document checklists

Multilingual provision of the tool and machine translation of instructions and checklists

Reminders and status tracking relating to your application procedure

General information on naturalization and residence law — as a presentation of legal questions to the general public, not a legal service (§ 2 Abs. 3 Nr. 5 RDG)

Pointers to the respective competent authority

02What civitas. deliberately does not do

Individual assessment of your application's prospects of success

Legal advice in individual cases — not even on discretionary decisions (§ 8 StAG)

Personal advice by phone, video call, or on-site

Representation before authorities

Filing objections against rejection notices

Filing a lawsuit before the administrative court

Legal assessment of prior convictions

03When a specialist lawyer takes over

Individual legal questions belong with a lawyer. Where your case requires a genuine individual-case examination — for example in the case of discretionary decisions under § 8 StAG, prior convictions, or after a rejection notice — we recommend consulting a specialist lawyer for migration law. On request, we will put you in touch; in doing so, civitas. does not assess any prospects of success and receives no commission (§ 49b Abs. 3 BRAO). The lawyer's fees are billed by the firm directly to you.