What is legal-mcp CLAUDE.md?

Project instructions for LegalMCP, a server that connects AI assistants to US case law, legal practice management, and federal court filings. The instructions describe its architecture, commands, files, and environment settings.

Use them when developing, configuring, testing, or documenting the LegalMCP project and its CourtListener, Clio, and PACER integrations.

They give an agent the project’s required context and operating rules instead of leaving it to infer how the codebase is organized. They also document the services and deployment options involved.

How Mahender22/legal-mcp configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to Mahender22/legal-mcp. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Mahender22/legal-mcp/main/CLAUDE.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Mahender22/legal-mcp

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

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Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/mahender22/legal-mcp/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/mahender22/legal-mcp/claude-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/mahender22/legal-mcp/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/mahender22/legal-mcp/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 866 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 866 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00866	$0.00866
Opus 5.5	$0.00346	$0.00346
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00173	$0.00173
Haiku 4.5	$0.00087	$0.00087

Measured 2mo ago against content hash af939ddcc5f7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

legal-mcp CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 69 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 69 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

LegalMCP — US Legal MCP Server

Overview

The first comprehensive US legal MCP server connecting AI assistants to case law, practice management, and court filings. 18 tools + 2 resources via FastMCP.

Architecture

Framework: FastMCP 3.1.1 (Python)
APIs: CourtListener (case law), Clio (practice management), PACER (court filings)
Pricing: $79/mo starter, $149/mo pro
Deployment: pip-installable, Docker, runs locally or hosted

Structure

legal-mcp/
├── legal_mcp/
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── server.py          # Main MCP server — all tools registered here
│   │   ├── courtlistener.py   # CourtListener API client (with error handling)
│   │   ├── clio.py            # Clio practice management client
│   │   ├── pacer.py           # PACER federal filings client
│   │   ├── citation_parser.py # Bluebook citation parser
│   │   ├── demo_data.py       # Pre-cached demo results (10 landmark cases)
│   │   └── config.py          # API URLs, env vars, DEMO_MODE
│   └── tests/                 # 33 tests
├── landing/
│   ├── index.html             # Landing page (dark "Chambers" theme)
│   └── api/
│       └── waitlist.py        # FastAPI waitlist backend
├── docs/
│   └── tools.md               # Comprehensive tool documentation
├── .github/workflows/
│   ├── ci.yml                 # Test pipeline (Python 3.10-3.12)
│   └── publish.yml            # PyPI publish on GitHub release
├── Dockerfile                 # Container deployment
├── docker-compose.yml         # Full stack (MCP + waitlist)
├── pyproject.toml             # Package config
├── SETUP.md                   # Credential acquisition guide
├── CHANGELOG.md               # Release notes
├── README.md                  # Marketing-grade README
└── LICENSE                    # MIT

Commands

pip install -e ".[dev,waitlist]" — install in dev mode
pytest legal_mcp/tests/ -v — run all 33 tests
python -m legal_mcp.src.server — run MCP server
LEGAL_MCP_DEMO=true python -m legal_mcp.src.server — run in demo mode
python landing/api/waitlist.py — run waitlist API on port 8080
docker-compose up — run full stack via Docker

Read the full file on GitHub · 69 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 69 lines · 866 tokens per session scan A af939ddcc5f7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

legal-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository Mahender22/legal-mcp (68 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 866 tokens to every session, about $0.0035 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Backend and APIs Legal and compliance

legal-mcp CLAUDE.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
legal-mcp CLAUDE.mdMahender22/legal-mcp	Instructions file	68	4mo ago	MIT	A	866	Claude Code
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vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	5,516	GitHub Copilot
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness	Instructions file	274k	2d ago	MIT	A	4,313	Codex, OpenCode

legal-mcp: Instructions file for Claude Code