foreign-law-research

Foreign Law Research & Ascertainment Skill

This skill guides lawyers and legal professionals through the systematic ascertainment of foreign law (statutes, case law, and international treaties of any jurisdiction outside mainland China). Version 2.0 aligns the whole workflow with the evidentiary standards applied by PRC courts — modeled on the Shanghai Financial Court's Guidelines on the Ascertainment of Foreign Law (2025) and the SPC judicial interpretations of the Law on the Application of Laws to Foreign-Related Civil Relations — so that research output is ready for submission and cross-examination in court: an Ascertainment Opinion plus a Research Log.

Data layer: 121 free legal databases plus an open-source data layer (git-versioned law corpora, open legal data collection scripts, and MCP servers).

Overview

Ascertaining foreign law is more than "finding the provision". In PRC cross-border practice, an ascertainment result must survive cross-examination and judicial review (Guidelines Art. 14): authenticity of the text, validity status, relevance to the dispute, and completeness of the search. This skill organizes the work as Scoping → Six research steps → Dual deliverables:

Step 0  Scoping ───────────┐
Step 1  Identify jurisdiction │
Step 2  Map sources of law    │  Research
Step 3  Identify instruments  │  (log as you go)
Step 4  Locate specific rules │
Step 5  Quality assurance ───┘
Step 6  Deliver ──→ Ascertainment Opinion (six-part structure)
                 Research Log (search audit trail)
                 AI-tool disclosure (tools / stages / human verification)

Reference map

Four reference files support the workflow. Consult them on demand: