Litigation Legal

Litigation Counsel Plugin

In-house litigation counsel support for managing a portfolio of matters. Cold-start captures your risk calibration, dispute landscape, and house style — the frame every matter is triaged against. Uniform intake turns new matters into structured log entries and per-matter history files. Status rollups and deep-dive briefings read from the log.

Built for counsel who own many matters at once, most of which are run by outside firms. This plugin is a thinking partner, not a matter management system. If you have LawVu / SimpleLegal / Onit, this does not replace them — it sits alongside, as your structured reasoning layer.

Every output is a draft for attorney review — cited, flagged, and gated — not a legal conclusion. The plugin does the work: reads the documents, applies your playbook, finds the issues, drafts the memo. A lawyer reviews, verifies, and decides. Citations are tagged by source so you know which ones came from a research tool and which ones need checking. Privilege markers are applied conservatively so nothing waives by accident. Consequential actions — filing, sending, executing — are gated behind explicit confirmation.

Prerequisites

Several features reference Gmail and scheduled-tasks integrations. These require MCP servers configured in your environment — they are not bundled. Without them, outputs are written to files for manual sending:

• Gmail MCP — /oc-status creates Gmail drafts if authenticated; otherwise falls back to markdown drafts in oc-status/[YYYY-MM-DD]/[slug].md.
• Scheduled-tasks MCP — no automatic scheduling is shipped. Set a recurring calendar reminder to invoke weekly commands.

The plugin runs end-to-end without either; the integrations are additive.

Who this is for

Role	Primary use
In-house litigation counsel	All of it — intake, triage, status, history, briefings
Associate GC / Deputy GC	Portfolio oversight, board reporting rollups
GC	Quick status on the portfolio, deep dive on any one matter

First run: cold-start

The cold-start interview writes the house practice profile — persistent across every matter. Three pillars:

• Risk calibration — appetite, materiality thresholds, reserve/disclosure triggers, settlement authority, insurance profile, severity-likelihood matrix
• Landscape — company, geographies, regulated status, dispute patterns, frequent adversaries, outside counsel bench, internal stakeholders
• House style — board/audit committee memo format, reserve memo format, outside counsel directive style, privilege conventions, escalation norms

It offers sensible defaults at each step (e.g., a 3×3 severity-likelihood grid) and keeps everything freeform-editable. If you don't have a written framework yet, this is the thing that forces the articulation.

/litigation-legal:cold-start-interview

Your configuration is stored at ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/CLAUDE.md and survives plugin updates.

Commands

Command	Does
/litigation-legal:cold-start-interview	Cold-start → writes house ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/CLAUDE.md
/litigation-legal:matter-intake	Uniform intake → writes matters/[slug]/ + appends to _log.yaml
/litigation-legal:portfolio-status	Portfolio rollup — risk distribution, upcoming deadlines, stale matters
/litigation-legal:matter-briefing [slug]	Deep briefing on one matter — read-ready before a GC or outside counsel call
/litigation-legal:matter-update [slug]	Append a dated event to a matter's history; refresh the log's last_updated
/litigation-legal:matter-close [slug]	Archive a matter out of the active portfolio (retained, not deleted)
/litigation-legal:demand-intake [title]	Pre-drafting context gathering for a demand letter (payment / breach / C&D / employment separation / preservation)
/litigation-legal:demand-draft [slug]	Draft the letter from intake — runs FRE 408 / privilege gate, outputs .docx, writes post-send checklist
/litigation-legal:demand-received [path]	Triage an inbound demand letter — options analysis, portfolio cross-check, hand off to matter/demand-intake
/litigation-legal:subpoena-triage [path]	Triage a subpoena — classify, scope/burden/privilege, objections framework, compliance plan
/litigation-legal:legal-hold [slug] [--issue/--refresh/--release/--status]	Issue, refresh, release, or report holds — writes .docx + updates log
/litigation-legal:chronology [slug]	Build or update a chronology from declared doc sources + uploads — tagged by significance per matter theory
/litigation-legal:oc-status	Draft weekly OC status-request emails across the portfolio; Gmail drafts if MCP available
/litigation-legal:claim-chart	Build or review an element chart — patent claim chart (infringement / invalidity / review) or civil element chart (any cause of action or defense) with gap detection

Skills

Skill	Purpose
cold-start-interview	House practice profile — risk calibration, landscape, style
matter-intake	Uniform intake questions; writes matter file + log row
portfolio-status	Rollup across the log — risk, deadlines, staleness
matter-briefing	Deep read of one matter from its file + history
matter-update	Structured event append; updates last_updated in log
matter-close	Archive semantics; captures outcome
demand-intake	Adaptive context gathering for a demand letter — parties, facts, leverage, privilege filters
demand-draft	FRE 408 / privilege gate, then drafts .docx with [CITE:___] placeholders; writes post-send checklist; offers matter creation
demand-received	Triage an inbound demand — merit, options, portfolio cross-check
subpoena-triage	Classify subpoena, analyze scope/burden/privilege, produce objections framework + compliance plan
legal-hold	Issue / refresh / release / status-report on holds; writes .docx notice; updates log's legal_hold fields
chronology	Extract dated events from declared doc sources + uploads; de-dupe; tag significance per matter theory
oc-status	Weekly portfolio-wide OC status-request email drafter; markdown + Gmail drafts
claim-chart	Patent claim chart (infringement / invalidity / review) or civil element chart (any cause of action or defense). Element-by-element mapping, every cell pin-cited, gap detection. Ships with a cause-of-action template library.

Interactive commands vs. scheduled agents

The commands above run when you invoke them — for when you're working a matter. The agents below run on a schedule — for what moves while you're not looking:

Agent	What it watches	Default cadence
docket-watcher	Court dockets for matters in the active portfolio — pulls new filings, computes candidate deadlines, cross-references each matter's history and deliverables	Weekly

How the data is organized

litigation-legal/
├── CLAUDE.md                          # HOUSE practice profile — risk, landscape, style
├── matters/
│   ├── _log.yaml                      # the portfolio ledger (one entry per matter)
│   └── [matter-slug]/
│       ├── matter.md                  # matter-specific intake + theory + posture
│       ├── history.md                 # append-only event log
│       ├── chronology.md              # advocacy-facing timeline (on demand)
│       └── legal-hold-v[N].docx       # hold notices (issue, refresh, release)
├── demand-letters/                    # outbound demands
│   └── [slug]/
│       ├── intake.md
│       ├── draft-v1.docx
│       └── checklist.md
├── inbound/                           # incoming demands, subpoenas, regulator letters
│   └── [slug]/
│       ├── incoming.[ext]
│       ├── triage.md
│       └── response-v1.docx           # if we respond
└── oc-status/                         # weekly OC status-request drafts
    └── [YYYY-MM-DD]/
        ├── _summary.md
        └── [slug].md                  # one email per matter

Separate folders because each has a distinct workflow. Matters get tracked in the portfolio; demand letters and inbound items may or may not rise to a matter; OC status drafts are periodic artifacts. When things relate, the related_matters field and cross-links in matter.md tie them together.

The log is YAML because it's parseable by rollup skills. Per-matter files are markdown because that's where you read and edit. Both are checked into the folder as plain text — nothing proprietary.

Connectors and citation verification

Connect a research tool first — the citation guardrails depend on it. Without one, every cite is tagged [verify] and the reviewer note above each deliverable records that sources weren't verified. The plugin works either way; it just does more of the verification for you when a research tool is connected.

The legal research connectors in this plugin aren't just data sources — they're the difference between a verified citation and a citation you have to check. A citation retrieved through CourtListener (U.S. court opinions, PACER dockets, citation verification), Trellis (state trial court dataset — dockets, rulings, verdicts, judge and opposing counsel analytics), Everlaw (your eDiscovery projects), or Aurora (read-only Consilio ediscovery — every record cited to source) is tagged with its source and can be traced back. A citation from the model's knowledge or from web search is tagged [verify] or [verify-pinpoint] and should be checked against a primary source before anyone relies on it. The plugin tiers its citations so your verification time goes where it matters.

Integrations

Ships with the general bucket of connectors in .mcp.json:

• Slack — search messages, read channels, find discussions
• Google Drive — search, read, and fetch documents

Designed to be useful with nothing connected. If/when you want to pull from Relativity, DISCO, CLMs, or email, integration skills can be added without changing the core architecture.

How it learns

Your practice profile at ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/CLAUDE.md isn't static — it improves as you use the plugin. Skills tell you when an output used a default you should tune. You can re-run setup, edit the file directly, or tell a skill to record a new position.

Notes

• Every skill reads from ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/CLAUDE.md first. If your risk appetite changes or you bring on new outside counsel, update it — don't paper over it in individual matters.
• ## Company profile is the first section of ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/CLAUDE.md by convention. If you run other -legal plugins, you can copy it across rather than re-entering the same context.
• _log.yaml is the source of truth for portfolio state. Keep it clean.
• Matter history is append-only. If something was wrong, note the correction as a new entry — don't edit the past.
• Closed matters stay in _log.yaml (searchable history). /portfolio-status filters them out of active rollups by default.

Inline marker conventions

Three markers appear in skill outputs and drafts. They are not disclaimers — they are action items:

• [CITE: specific cite needed] — a legal authority placeholder. Counsel fills or confirms before sending.
• [VERIFY: specific fact] — a factual assertion not yet confirmed to source. Counsel verifies before relying.
• [SME VERIFY: specific judgment call] — a judgment (merit read, significance tag, objection strength, privilege status) that requires subject-matter expert review. SME = licensed attorney qualified in the relevant jurisdiction / area. Used liberally — anything judgment-heavy should carry this.

A draft or triage with unresolved markers is not final, regardless of how polished it reads.

Testing & QA