Legal Research Memo

Legal Research Memo is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from zgbrenner/agentcounsel. It costs 54 tokens per session (2,724 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured method for preparing a legal research memo about a specific question, using sections for the question, answer, facts, assumptions, analysis, and conclusion.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to organize first-pass legal research with sources, analysis, and clearly marked points an attorney must verify.
Why use it?
It separates verified law from assumptions and unresolved items, reducing the risk of presenting an unchecked case, statute, regulation, or quotation as fact.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to organize first-pass legal research with sources, analysis, and clearly marked points an attorney must verify.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/zgbrenner/agentcounsel/legal-research-memo
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add zgbrenner/agentcounsel --skill legal-research-memo
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zgbrenner/agentcounsel

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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.

agentmods badge for Legal Research Memo

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zgbrenner/agentcounsel/legal-research-memo/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/zgbrenner/agentcounsel/legal-research-memo)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zgbrenner/agentcounsel/legal-research-memo"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zgbrenner/agentcounsel/legal-research-memo/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for Legal Research Memo

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zgbrenner/agentcounsel/legal-research-memo"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zgbrenner/agentcounsel/legal-research-memo.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,724 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00054 $0.02724
Opus 5 $0.00027 $0.01362
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00545
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00272

Measured 12d ago against content hash 791adff88f0c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Legal Research Memo 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 12d 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.

adapters/claude-code-plugin/skills/legal-research-memo/SKILL.md · 138 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 138 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Purpose

Produce a structured, attorney-ready legal research memo in response to a discrete legal question. The memo organizes analysis using IRAC-style discipline — Question Presented, Brief Answer, Facts, Assumptions, Discussion/Analysis, Conclusion — and maintains a strict separation between facts, assumptions, applicable law, analysis, and open verification items. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review only. It is not legal advice and does not substitute for attorney judgment.

The most important discipline this skill enforces: no legal authority — no case, statute, regulation, rule, secondary source, or quotation — may be stated as if it exists unless it comes from a user-provided document or has been independently researched and verified through a reliable source. Every asserted authority must be checkable. Unverified authority must be marked with an explicit [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder and placed in the attorney verification section.

Use When

  • A user asks to "research this issue," "write a research memo," "what is the law on X," or "can you analyze whether Y is legal."
  • A lawyer or legal team needs a first-pass research memo before attorney analysis.
  • The user needs to organize known authorities and facts into a structured memo before a client call, brief, or negotiation.
  • A question of law or mixed fact-and-law has been identified and needs structured written analysis.
  • The user wants to document legal assumptions underlying a transaction, filing, or decision.
  • A gap analysis is needed: what authorities support a position, and what do not.

Required Inputs

  • The legal question(s) — stated with specificity. Vague questions must be refined before proceeding; do not broaden or narrow the question without user confirmation.
  • Jurisdiction and governing law — the applicable jurisdiction(s) and the body of law (federal, state, contractual, regulatory). If unknown, flag as [CONFIRM: jurisdiction] and note that the analysis cannot be completed without it.
  • Relevant facts — the facts from which the legal question arises. Do not reconstruct or invent facts; use only facts the user has provided.
  • Procedural posture — if applicable (e.g., pre-litigation, pending motion, transactional, regulatory inquiry).
  • Relevant date — the date on which the legal question turns (e.g., the date of the alleged breach, the filing date, the effective date of a statute).
  • Optional: any legal authorities, cases, statutes, or secondary sources the user has already identified. These will be incorporated and verified, not assumed to be accurate.
  • Optional: the user's desired legal position or outcome (flags potential advocacy posture).

Read the full file on GitHub · 138 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 138 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 791adff88f0c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Legal Research Memo is a skill published in the GitHub repository zgbrenner/agentcounsel (19 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 2,724 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 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.

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