How to use the Legal Clinic Profile Customizer agent skill

What an agent skill is and what customize does

An agent skill is a folder of instructions that Claude loads when a request matches the skill's description. This one lives in the claude-for-legal project, under the legal-clinic plugin. Its single file is SKILL.md.

Customize is for adjusting a profile you already have. Instead of re-running the full cold-start interview, you change one thing. The skill reads the existing profile file, shows a grouped list of current values, asks what you want to change, explains which other clinic commands will be affected, confirms, and then writes the change.

• Clinic profile: clinic name, host school, faculty lead, active practice areas, case type limits
• Jurisdiction: primary state, courts, agencies, local rules path
• Supervision style: informal or formal review queue, and who reviews what
• Practice-area templates: which are active, and any local overrides
• Semester: current semester, active students, rollover rules, handoff memo format
• Output safeguards, seed documents, outputs, workflow and integrations

Install the customize skill

You can install the skill in one of three places, depending on whether you want it for yourself or for a single project. Download the ZIP of the skill from the page where you found this guide, then unzip it.

For a personal install, unzip the skill into ~/.claude/skills/. For a project install, unzip it into the .claude/skills/ folder of that project. You can also upload the ZIP in the Claude apps under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

The skill needs the claude-for-legal plugin with the legal-clinic plugin set up. It also needs an existing clinic profile at ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-clinic/CLAUDE.md.

• Personal: ~/.claude/skills/
• Project: .claude/skills/ inside the project folder
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload the ZIP

Check that you are ready before you start

Customize stops if setup has not been completed. If the profile file does not exist, or still contains [PLACEHOLDER] values, the skill tells you to run the setup command first. The setup command is /legal-clinic:cold-start-interview, and it must have been run before customize will work.

Once the profile exists, you can start a change at any time.

• Confirm the claude-for-legal plugin and legal-clinic plugin are installed
• Confirm the profile file exists at the path above
• Confirm cold-start-interview has been run at least once

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You can invoke the skill with the slash command /legal-clinic:customize, optionally followed by a section name or a description of the change. The skill also loads on natural phrases in its description, such as "change my [thing]", "new semester", "add a practice area", "update my config", or "customize".

If you are not sure what to call a setting, just describe it. The skill will show the grouped map and ask what to adjust.

• "Change my jurisdiction to a different state"
• "New semester, roll over the clinic"
• "Add a practice area for expungement"
• "Update my config for formal supervision review"
• /legal-clinic:customize supervision style

Walk through a change: examples

The skill shows the current value, asks for the new value, explains what changes downstream, confirms, and writes the change. Each example below describes what the skill says it will do.

Adding a practice area routes matters of that type through the new template in intake, and makes the drafting, memo and client letter commands use its prompts. Research start adds the corresponding Westlaw search terms.

Moving from informal to formal supervision activates the supervisor review queue, so student output lands there for supervisor sign-off before it goes to the client.

A new semester rollover archives the prior semester's active cases, carries forward matters you flag as continuing, and prompts incoming students through the ramp command.

• Add a practice area: intake, drafting, memo, client letter and research-start are affected
• Informal to formal review: the supervisor review queue becomes active
• New semester: prior active cases are archived, continuing matters carried forward

Safety notes: scripts, network and safeguards

The skill does not run scripts and does not use the network, according to its listing. It reads and writes the clinic profile file on your machine.

The skill protects safeguards that exist because students ship work product. It warns if you try to remove the "NOT final work product" framing on drafts, plain-language standards on client-facing outputs, the "does NOT decide case acceptance" line on intake, the "NOT substantive advice" line on client letters, or the scaffold-not-analysis framing on memos. It will confirm the trade-off with you. If you are a student rather than the professor, it suggests discussing the change with your supervisor first.

The skill never deletes a section. To drop a practice area, it offers to mark the area [Archived]. Archiving keeps case history accessible but hides the template from intake routing.

• No scripts are run
• No network use
• Sections are archived, never deleted
• Safeguard removal triggers a trade-off check

Tips for smooth changes

Make one change at a time. The skill is designed not to re-ask the whole interview, so a focused request gets a faster result. If a change would make the profile inconsistent, such as a formal review queue with an informal supervision note, or a practice area turned on with no jurisdiction rules configured, the skill flags the tension before writing.

• Name the section you want to change
• Read the downstream effects before you confirm
• Ask for an archive instead of a deletion when you want to drop something