# Relex Research > Use when a Relex case needs legal authority — statutes, case law, regulator guidance, local ordinances — in ANY jurisdiction. Teaches the division of labour — you DISCOVER authorities with your own search and public legal MCPs; the Relex harness FETCHES-AND-CACHES verbatim text so drafts can cite it — plus per-jurisdiction channels and compliance limits. - Skill: `relexlegal/relex-research` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add relexlegal/relex-research` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/relexlegal/relex-research/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Research & Search - Author: relexlegal (https://skillmd.com/u/relexlegal) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/relexlegal/relex-research --- # Legal Research: You Discover, the Harness Grounds A Relex draft may only cite law whose **verbatim text sits in the global cache** — the server's verifier rejects anything else. Your web results and memory can never ground a citation; they only *find* what to ground. So: ``` discover (you: web + public legal MCPs) → directive (POST /research/scrape — the harness caches VERBATIM text) → ground (the case agent cites the cached text; verifier enforces) ``` Epistemic discipline while discovering is `relex-citations` — in short: no docket numbers, margin numbers or quotes from model memory, ever. ## Step 1 — know what the harness can fetch `execute GET /research/sources` — the live registry. `enabled: true` sources can be fetched-and-cached by directive. Everything else is **discovery-only**: you research it yourself and pass the best official URL as `sourceHint`, or the harness falls back to its generic fetch ladder. ## Step 2 — discover (your job) Use your own WebSearch/WebFetch and, when connected, public legal MCPs. Prefer official/free sources; identify the authority in **anchor form** — topic, court/ bench, date if known, official source to verify in — never a memorized citation. | Jurisdiction | Best discovery channels | |---|---| | US | CourtListener official MCP (mcp.courtlistener.com) — case law, dockets, citation check; GovInfo/eCFR for federal statutes/regs; LOCUS for local ordinances (below) | | DE | NeuRIS (rechtsinformationen.bund.de) — new official statutes+case-law API; gesetze-im-internet | | CH | entscheidsuche.ch (+ its MCP) — BGer + all cantons; Fedlex | | UK | legislation.gov.uk (open API); Find Case Law (National Archives) | | FR | justicelibre MCP (no key, ~3M decisions); Légifrance | | IT | normattiva.it / dati.normattiva.it; SentenzeWeb (last ~5y Cassazione, free) | | ES | BOE consolidated-law API (statutes) | | RO | legislatie.just.ro; rejust.ro (decisions); portal.just.ro (dockets) | | EU | EUR-Lex + CELLAR SPARQL (no auth); CURIA via ECLI | | CA | CanLII (metadata/citator via API), laws-lois.justice.gc.ca | | JP | e-Gov Laws API; courts.go.jp (selected decisions) | | AU | AustLII (read, don't bulk-scrape); legislation.gov.au | Per-jurisdiction method, citation schema and source whitelists live in the `../jurisdictions/.md` packs when installed. **Compliance limits you must respect during discovery** (encode in your plan): UK Find Case Law bulk/computational use needs a licence — read individual decisions, let the harness handle caching lawfully; Spain CENDOJ prohibits bulk reuse (read single decisions only); CanLII full text is site-only per its terms; AustLII discourages scraping. When a channel is restricted, discovery stays manual-and-targeted and the `sourceHint` you pass is the official page. ## Step 3 — directive (the harness's job) `POST /research/scrape` grounds one authority — params via `search` (`jurisdiction`, `code`, `article`, `authorityType` = statute | case_law | regulator, `sourceHint?`, `caseId?` for provenance; results are a shared cache). - **Cache-first**: `status: "cached"` means it's already grounded — done. - `status: "enqueued"` → poll `GET /research/scrape/{jobId}` until `ingested`, then trigger a case-agent re-reason turn so it locks the issue to the text. - `status: "cooldown"` → a recent fetch failed; give a better `sourceHint` later. - **Targeted only**: directives are for the citations a draft actually needs (the case's `pending_citations` / your audit's grounding gaps). Never bulk. There's a modest daily cap; case law behind rate-limited APIs (CourtListener free tier) makes every directive count. - **US case law is now harness-groundable**: `us_courtlistener` is a provisioned source, so `POST /research/scrape` with `authorityType: "case_law"` fetches the opinion's verbatim text directly (no HTML-ladder fallback). Always re-check `GET /research/sources` for the live enabled set rather than assuming. - **Shared quota, not per-user**: the CourtListener token is ONE credential for the whole deployment — every directive across every user draws from the same free-tier bucket (as of the May 2026 policy change: 5/min, 50/hr, 125/day). This is a stronger reason to keep directives targeted (above): a burst of bulk requests from one case can throttle every other case's case-law grounding for the rest of the day. - For case law, put court in `code` and docket/ECLI/reporter cite in `article` (e.g. `code: "Cass. 1re civ.", article: "21-12.345"`), `authorityType: "case_law"`, and the decision URL you found as `sourceHint`. ## LOCUS — US local ordinances (two vantage points, one corpus) - **Grounding path (backend)**: `execute GET /research/locus?state=CA&city=…&query=…` → discovery results with `coverage`: `matched` / `covered_no_match` (broaden terms) / `not_in_locus` (fall back to web; NEVER invent an ordinance). Then `GET /research/locus?locusId=…` fetches the section's verbatim public-domain text for citation-grade grounding. - **Analysis path (yours, optional)**: the LOCUS dataset (`huggingface.co/datasets/LocalLaws/LOCUS-v1`, paper "Freeing the Law with LOCUS") also carries analytical layers (topic, function, enforcement- discretion, opacity, paternalism scores) under **CC-BY-NC-4.0**. You may read those yourself (HF datasets-server `/rows`) to shape strategy — keep that analysis on your side (it is non-commercial-licensed; the Relex backend never serves it), attribute the corpus, and still ground any citation through the backend path above. - The case agent runs its own LOCUS search on local-law questions; read its coverage verdicts from the case before duplicating a search. ## Anti-patterns - Citing from your web page reads ("the court held… [link]") in a draft — the verifier will reject it; issue the directive and cite the cached text. - Directive-spamming a jurisdiction "to have it all" — targeted grounding only. - Treating a refused/blocked source as an error — restricted sources are discovery-only by design; route around with `sourceHint`.