UK Legal Skills

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FAQ ​

Quick answers to the questions that come up most often when running UK Legal Skills — what you need to install, what the skills are (and are not), which hosts they run in, and where to get help. Everything here is England & Wales only.

Not legal advice

Every /legal command produces AI-generated legal analysis and drafting, intended as a starting point. It is not a substitute for a qualified solicitor. Always have a solicitor review before you sign a contract or rely on a generated document.

Do I need an API key? ​

No — not for the /legal commands. Each skill is a self-contained Markdown prompt with no runtime, no SDK, and no key baked in. The agent host (Claude Code, Codex, or another compatible host) provides the model access, reads the skill, and runs it using its own capabilities.

The two local MCP servers (uk-legislation and caselaw) also need no API key — they query public government APIs at legislation.gov.uk and caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk. They need only a one-time TypeScript build (npm install && npm run build). The remote lex server is reached over HTTP and likewise needs no key from you. See Live UK legal data (MCP) below.

No. It is AI-generated analysis and drafting to use as a starting point — not advice you can rely on, and not a substitute for a solicitor. Every output begins with a standard disclaimer block (AI-generated, not legal advice, consult a solicitor, England & Wales only) that the skills treat as load-bearing. Always have a qualified solicitor review before you sign or rely on anything.

Does it cover Scotland or Northern Ireland? ​

No — England & Wales only, by design. Scots law and Northern Irish law are out of scope. The statutes, section numbers, limitation periods, court procedure, and market standards baked into every skill are all E&W-specific, so applying them to a Scottish or NI matter would give you the wrong answer. See the UK Legislation reference for the statutes the skills work against.

How does it stay current with new legislation? ​

Through live in-force checks, not a hardcoded snapshot. Post-2024 reforms move fast, so the commencement-aware skills (employment, tenancy, gdpr, consumer, corporate, legislation-tracker, pre-launch) call the uk-legislation MCP server before treating any reform as binding — classifying every cited provision as 🟢 current, 🟡 transitional/prospective, or 🔴 repealed, and flagging anything not yet commenced.

That matters for fast-moving reforms such as the Employment Rights Act 2025, the Renters' Rights Act 2025, and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025: the skill never asserts a provision is binding until it confirms what is actually in force on the day you run it, and reports the rest as phased in / awaiting commencement. The /legal legislation-tracker command does the same in reverse — it scans a document you give it for outdated, amended, or repealed references.

Can I add my own skill? ​

Yes. The skills are designed to be forked. The shape of the change is:

  1. Add a new skills/legal-<id>/SKILL.md — a self-contained Markdown prompt that starts with the disclaimer block and pins jurisdiction to England & Wales.
  2. Wire it into the /legal router (legal/SKILL.md) and the canonical catalogue (registry/skill-registry.json).
  3. Run npm run test:skills — the parity guard that keeps the 38 skills, 12 agents, router, registry, and docs in lockstep. It must pass before your change is accepted.

See CONTRIBUTING.md in the repository for the full walkthrough. The golden rules are: England & Wales only, every output starts with the disclaimer block, risk indicators are 🔴/🟡/🟢, and the parity guard must pass.

What input formats are supported? ​

Input is always one of three shapes — preserve this trichotomy whatever you feed in:

InputHow you give itHow the skill reads it
File path/legal review ./lease.docxThe host's file-reading tool (the Read tool in Claude Code)
Pasted textPaste the contract text straight into the chatRead directly from the message
URL/legal compliance https://example.comThe host's web-fetch tool (WebFetch in Claude Code)

For files, the skills ingest PDF, DOCX, and TXT. Scanned or image-only PDFs fall back to text extraction via the bundled ingestion helpers (scripts/markitdown_extract.py and scripts/preprocess_document.py), which convert PDF / DOCX / TXT — and several other office formats — into structured Markdown the model can read. Generation commands such as /legal nda and /legal terms take a short description or a URL rather than a document.

Commands that generate documents (nda, terms, privacy, agreement, board-pack) and the calendar/profile commands (regulatory-calendar) accept a pasted description in place of a file. URL commands (compliance, terms, privacy) expect a live website to scan.

Which hosts does it run in? ​

Any agent host that can read a Markdown skill and use its own tools to run it. The skills are deliberately platform-neutral — they do not assume a single vendor's tools, and tell the host to use whatever equivalent it has for reading files, fetching URLs, launching subagents, saving files, and calling MCP.

  • Claude Code — the primary host. install.sh copies the router, all 38 skills, 12 agents, ingestion/PDF scripts, and the contract template into ~/.claude/. This is the path the Getting Started guide walks through.
  • OpenAI Codex CLI — the skills are designed to run unchanged; the host reads each SKILL.md and executes it with its own capabilities.
  • Other compatible agent hosts — anything that can read the skill prompt and provide file-read, web-fetch, subagent, and MCP equivalents.

Where a host lacks a capability (no subagents, no MCP), the skill is written to state the limitation and continue with the best available evidence rather than failing.

How are the MCP servers used? ​

Skills that need current law call three Model Context Protocol servers, registered in the repo's .mcp.json. They turn the skills from a static prompt into a tool grounded in the live statute book and case law as it stands the morning you run it:

ServerSourceWhat it provides
uk-legislationlegislation.gov.uk (OGL v3.0)search_legislation, lookup_statute, lookup_section, check_in_force, check_amendments, get_extent — the live in-force and amendment checks behind every commencement-aware skill
caselawcaselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk (Open Justice Licence)search_caselaw, lookup_judgment, summarise_judgment, get_judgments_for_section, plus search-by-judge / party — powers /legal caselaw
lexRemote HTTP, semantic search over 63,000+ judgmentsComplements the local caselaw server with semantic retrieval

The two local servers are TypeScript and need a one-time build (no key — they hit public government APIs):

bash
cd mcp-servers/uk-legislation && npm install && npm run build
cd ../caselaw && npm install && npm run build

When a commencement-aware skill runs, it queries check_in_force / check_amendments before treating any reform as binding. Read more on the MCP servers overview, the UK Legislation server, and the Lex server.

Where do I get help? ​

  • Getting Started — installation, requirements, and a quick-start walkthrough.
  • CLI command reference — every /legal command, what it analyses, and the report it produces.
  • All Commands — the complete generated catalogue of all 38 commands.
  • UK Legislation reference — the statutes the skills work against.
  • The Counsel — prefer a polished web app to the terminal? The hosted version is built on these same skills, with document upload, live streaming analysis, audio briefings, tracked-changes export, and matter management in the browser. It is a separately deployed product; the open-source repo here is the underlying skills engine.

UK Legal Skills — Established MMXXVI · Built for England & Wales · Not legal advice.

Source-available under the Functional Source License (FSL-1.1-Apache-2.0)