Find Law Firm

find-law-firm

Drive the ServiceGraph API (https://api.servicegraph.co) to find, shortlist, and enrich US business-to-business law firms.

The catalog is B2B-only. A historical audit dropped over half of high-rank "legal" firms because they served personal/consumer matters (divorce, personal injury, criminal defense, family law, estate planning). The remaining catalog skews toward corporate, IP, M&A, securities, employment, commercial litigation, regulatory, data privacy, real-estate transactions, and corporate tax.

Always pin industry:legal. Sub-areas of law are NOT separate tags — industry:legal is the most specific structured level — so practice-area specialization (IP, M&A, employment, securities, etc.) is a keyword substring search on firm text.

Any HTTP client works (curl, fetch, requests). Examples below use curl.

When NOT to use this skill

The single biggest failure mode is firing on consumer-personal legal asks. Refuse those — don't fall back to a partial filter.

Out of scope:

• Personal/family matters where the user is the end client: divorce, child custody, family law, estate planning, wills/trusts, personal injury, criminal defense, individual bankruptcy, immigration for the user themselves, landlord/tenant disputes.
• DIY legal research: "is this enforceable?", "do I owe...?", "what does this clause mean?".
• In-house counsel hires (GC, paralegal, contracts manager).
• Non-US firms — the catalog is US-only.
• Individual freelancers / contract attorneys for hire.

If the user is a business procuring legal services (corporate counsel, fundraising, IP, regulatory), this skill applies regardless of whether the practice area is "boring" — defaults to fire on B2B procurement intent.

The four-tier funnel

Quota rule that matters: /search and /get charge per unique firm viewed per calendar month, not per call. Re-paging the same query is free. Two different filters that overlap charge once for the overlap. Re-fetching a firm you already pulled this month is free.

Session-start ritual

Before constructing any filter, call:

GET https://api.servicegraph.co/v1/tags?include_values=1

Cache the response for the conversation. Confirm legal is present in the industry value list. Note that industry:legal is the most specific structured tag for law firms — practice-area specialization is keyword-based.

Field kinds you'll use most:

• categorical: industry (always legal), state, pricing_model, company_size_signal, geography_served — op :
• numeric: rating, review_count_total, founded_year — ops = >= <= > <
• presence: has:phone, has:clutch, has:rating, has:linkedin_company, …
• keyword: free-text substring across firm name / brand / title / meta / legal_name. Bareword in the filter becomes a keyword. This is how you specialize on practice area (IP, patent, M&A, employment, securities, etc.).

Note: service_provided tags are not populated for industry:legal in the current catalog (see catalog notes — Clutch and similar directories don't break legal down further). Use barewords for practice areas instead.

Auth

/tags, /check, and /explore are anonymous. /search and /get require a bearer token.

Resolution rule — try these sources in order before triggering OTP:

1. Shell environment: $SERVICEGRAPH_TOKEN. Most agent harnesses only inherit explicit exports, not dotenv files — so this catches the case where the user has it exported in ~/.bashrc / ~/.zshrc.

2. Project dotenv files: read .env.local then .env in the current working directory and look for a SERVICEGRAPH_TOKEN=… line. This is the common case the agent will miss otherwise — users frequently put the token in .env.local (gitignored) and expect it to "just work," but Claude Code and similar harnesses don't auto-load dotenv files. If you find it, use it; don't ask.

If found in any of the above, set Authorization: Bearer <token> on every authed request and skip OTP.

3. Otherwise, walk the user through OTP (one-time, ~30 s):
   • Ask the user for their email address.
   • POST /v1/auth/request-otp with {"email": "..."}. Returns 204; a 6-digit code lands in their inbox.
   • Ask the user to paste the code.
   • POST /v1/auth/verify-otp with {"email": "...", "code": "...", "name": "<a label like claude-cli>"}. Returns {"token": "vk_...", "expires_at": "...", "user": {...}}.
   • Use that token for the rest of the session.
   • Tell the user: "Save this as SERVICEGRAPH_TOKEN to skip this step next time — either export SERVICEGRAPH_TOKEN=… in your shell rc, or add SERVICEGRAPH_TOKEN=… to a .env.local file in your project (gitignored). The token is shown once and lasts 90 days."

If a /search or /get returns 401 mid-session, the token expired or was revoked — re-run the OTP flow.

# 1. trigger the email
curl -X POST 'https://api.servicegraph.co/v1/auth/request-otp' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"email":"you@example.com"}'

# 2. exchange the code
curl -X POST 'https://api.servicegraph.co/v1/auth/verify-otp' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"email":"you@example.com","code":"123456","name":"my-cli"}'
# → { "token": "vk_…", "expires_at": "...", "user": {...} }

Filter DSL

One query parameter, GitHub-search-style.

filter   := orExpr
orExpr   := andExpr ("OR" andExpr)*
andExpr  := notExpr (("AND")? notExpr)*    # whitespace = implicit AND
notExpr  := ("NOT" | "-") notExpr | atom
atom     := "(" filter ")" | predicate
predicate:= IDENT op valueOrList | bareword
op       := ":" | "=" | ">=" | "<=" | ">" | "<"
valueOrList := value ("," value)*
value    := IDENT | NUMBER | tagAtEvidence
tagAtEvidence := IDENT "@" ("low"|"medium"|"high")
bareword := IDENT | NUMBER          # → keyword:<bareword>

Four rules that bite:

1. AND binds tighter than OR. a OR b c parses as a OR (b AND c). Use parens.
2. Comma list = OR within one predicate. state:CA,NY,TX matches any of the three.
3. Negation is -x or NOT x. Negative literals inside a comma list are not allowed: state:CA,-NY is rejected. Use state:CA -state:NY.
4. Bareword = keyword search. Any IDENT or NUMBER not followed by an operator becomes a free-text substring across name / brand / title / meta / legal_name. Multiple barewords AND.

Legal-flavored examples (validate yours with /v1/check):

industry:legal state:CA patent
industry:legal state:NY,DE m&a
industry:legal employment
industry:legal securities ipo
industry:legal data privacy gdpr
industry:legal commercial litigation state:TX
industry:legal -company_size_signal:solo rating>=4 review_count_total>=20
industry:legal corporate startup

When in doubt about whether a filter parses, hit /v1/check?filter=... first — it's free and returns the canonical normalized form.

Practice area → keyword mapping (since legal sub-areas are not structured tags):

firm_id contract

firm_id is a stable 12-hex-char handle:

firm_id = sha256(apex.lower().rstrip(".")).hexdigest()[:12]

apex is the registered domain (dlapiper.com, not www.dlapiper.com/about). Anyone with an apex list can compute firm_ids locally and call /v1/get/:id directly — no /search needed for BYO enrichment.

import hashlib
def firm_id(apex):
    return hashlib.sha256(apex.lower().rstrip(".").encode()).hexdigest()[:12]

echo -n "dlapiper.com" | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' \
  | openssl dgst -sha256 -hex | awk '{print substr($2,1,12)}'

Recipes

A. IP / patent firm in a state

User: "Three boutique IP law firms in California for hardware-startup patent prosecution."

GET /v1/explore?filter=industry:legal+state:CA+patent
# → pool size + breakdowns

GET /v1/search?filter=industry:legal+state:CA+patent+-company_size_signal:large_50plus&limit=10
# → 10 brief cards (boutique ⇒ exclude large firms); user picks 3

GET /v1/get/<firm_id>     # ×3
# → urls, phones, emails for outreach

B. M&A counsel for a fundraise

User: "M&A counsel for a Series-B fundraise — top firms in NY."

GET /v1/search?filter=industry:legal+state:NY+m&a&limit=10&order_by=relevance

C. Securities / IPO experience

User: "Securities law firms experienced with IPOs."

GET /v1/search?filter=industry:legal+securities+ipo&limit=10

D. Indirect intent — "outside counsel for GDPR/SOC2"

User: "Our compliance is getting complex — we need outside counsel for GDPR, CCPA, and SOC2 oversight."

That's a B2B legal procurement ask in regulatory/data-privacy:

GET /v1/search?filter=industry:legal+(gdpr OR ccpa OR privacy)+compliance&limit=10

E. Employment law for a tech employer

User: "Mid-size firms specializing in employment law for tech companies."

GET /v1/search?filter=industry:legal+employment+tech+company_size_signal:medium_10_50,small_2_10

F. Quality threshold + commercial litigation

User: "Three commercial litigation firms in Texas with at least 4-star ratings."

GET /v1/search?filter=industry:legal+commercial+litigation+state:TX+rating>=4&limit=10

G. BYO apex list — enrich domains the user already has

User pastes 8–20 law-firm domains. For each:

1. Compute firm_id locally (see contract above).
2. GET /v1/get/<firm_id> — full bundle if in catalog, 404 (not charged) if not.
3. Aggregate, present, flag the not-found ones to the user. A 404 often means the firm is consumer-focused (divorce, PI) and was filtered out of the B2B catalog.

Gotchas

• Always pin industry:legal. Without it, "patent" or "m&a" as keywords would also match marketing/IT firm meta tags.
• Refuse consumer-personal legal asks. Divorce, personal injury, criminal defense, family law, estate planning, wills, individual immigration, personal bankruptcy — these are NOT in the catalog. Tell the user the catalog is B2B-only and suggest they look elsewhere (state bar referral services, Avvo, etc.). Do NOT return a partial result hoping it's close enough.
• industry:legal is the only structured handle. Practice areas (IP, M&A, employment, securities, etc.) are keyword-only. Multi-word areas split into ANDed barewords (commercial litigation = commercial AND litigation).
• looks_not_pro_services 404 is not a bug. A firm_id may exist in /search but 404 on /get if it's been flagged. Skip and continue; not charged.
• /v1/explore k=20 suppression. When fewer than 20 firms match, the response is {"count": "<20", "suppressed": true, "breakdowns": {}}. Drilling further makes the count smaller. Broaden or escalate to /v1/search.
• Briefs from /search do NOT include apex, url, phone_primary, email_primary, legal_name, or address. If the user asks for contact info, you must /get/:id. Do not pretend to have it from the brief.
• Catalog skews toward mid/large B2B firms. Solo practitioners and very small (<5 attorney) shops are under-represented after the audit. If the user wants a "boutique" firm, exclude company_size_signal:large_50plus rather than requiring solo.
• DIY/legal-research questions ("is this NDA enforceable?", "explain fair use") are NOT procurement. Refuse and offer to find a firm if the user wants advice rather than research.
• Software-product comparisons (Ironclad vs DocuSign, etc.) are NOT procurement either.
• Quota is per-user-per-month, deduped on first view. Re-views are free; re-pagination is free.

Errors

All errors return JSON: {"error": {"code": "...", "message": "..."}}.

Authed responses carry X-RateLimit-* and X-Quota-* headers. Surface the remaining-month value to the user when it gets low so they can budget.

End-to-end example

User: "Three boutique IP law firms in California that handle patent prosecution for hardware startups, ideally with at least a 4-star rating."

# 1. Discover fields (once per session)
GET /v1/tags?include_values=1
# Confirms 'legal' is a valid industry value, 'rating' is numeric.

# 2. Validate the filter and scope the pool (free, no auth)
GET /v1/check?filter=industry:legal+state:CA+patent+rating>=4+-company_size_signal:large_50plus
# → {"valid": true, "normalized": "..."}

GET /v1/explore?filter=industry:legal+state:CA+patent+rating>=4+-company_size_signal:large_50plus
# → {"count": 27, "breakdowns": {...}}

# 3. Search briefs
GET /v1/search?filter=...&limit=10
# Header: Authorization: Bearer $SERVICEGRAPH_TOKEN
# → 10 brief cards.

# 4. Present briefs to user, get their pick of 3.

# 5. Pull full bundles for the 3 picks
GET /v1/get/<firm_id>     # ×3
# → urls, phones, emails for outreach

End of session: report X-Quota-Remaining-Month so the user knows how much budget is left.