Legal Research Roadmap Starter
Builds a research roadmap (statutes to check, case law areas, search terms) for a legal issue, explicitly unverified.
- Repository
- anthropics/claude-for-legal
- Stars
- 9,870
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
- Files
- 1 file
What it does
When a law student asks where to start on a legal question, this skill makes the agent produce a research plan rather than an answer. It frames the issue narrowly, lists statutes and case-law areas that are likely relevant (clearly labelled as unverified), suggests secondary sources and Westlaw or CourtListener search terms, and reads the clinic's own uploaded documents first if they match. Every item is flagged as a lead for the student to check, not as authority.
Great for
- Law students in clinical programs starting research on an unfamiliar issue
- Clinic supervisors who want students to begin from their own precedent bank
- Developers studying how to build guardrails that stop an AI from presenting unverified citations as fact
Skip it if
- Anyone needing reliable legal citations or advice: the skill states its output is unverified and can be wrong about which statutes apply or are current
- Non-legal or non-clinic use, since it depends on a specific clinic configuration file and seed documents
- Filing court papers or relying on the output without checking primary sources in the jurisdiction
Try asking
- “/legal-clinic:research-start "habitability defense to nonpayment eviction in [State]"”
- “Where should I start researching whether a broken heater is a habitability violation?”
- “Here is my existing research memo on lease termination; what gaps do you see?”
- “Give me a research roadmap for retaliatory eviction claims in my state”
Install in 3 steps
- 1
Download the skill
The ZIP contains the 1 original files, the Apache-2.0 licence and an attribution note.
research-start.zip - 2
Add it to your agent
Claude Code (all projects)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip research-start.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)
mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip research-start.zip -d .claude/skills/Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.
- 3
Ask for the task
No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.
Get better results
- Upload your clinic's seed documents (handbook, filing guides, prior memos) before running it, since the skill reads them first.
- Narrow broad questions to one research question at a time, as the skill itself recommends.
- Treat every statute and case-law area as a lead to verify in a primary source, and check any web-search results tagged for verification before relying on them.
What's inside
- SKILL.md
Redistributed unmodified from anthropics/claude-for-legal under the Apache-2.0 licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.