# Family Law Cold-Start Interview > Use when a family-law practice group is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure its practice profile by answering a structured interview covering jurisdictions, client context, escalation thresholds, output preferences, source documents, standard positions, review requirements, and prohibited assumptions. - Skill: `zgbrenner/family-law-cold-start-interview` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add zgbrenner/family-law-cold-start-interview` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/zgbrenner/family-law-cold-start-interview/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: zgbrenner (https://skillmd.com/u/zgbrenner) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/zgbrenner/family-law-cold-start-interview --- # Family Law Cold-Start Interview ## Purpose Conduct a structured, staged interview with a family-law practice group — led by a supervising attorney or authorized designee — to gather the information required to populate `practice-profiles/family-law.md`. The skill walks through all eight profile fields in sequence, records every answer, and assembles a filled draft of the profile for the practice group's review and approval. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review — not legal advice and not a final configuration. ## Use When - A team is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure `practice-profiles/family-law.md` for the first time. - A family-law practice group is being onboarded to the library and no current profile exists. - The library is being stood up for the first time and the family-law area is included in scope. - A practice group wishes to revisit or rebuild its profile from scratch rather than make incremental updates. ## Required Inputs - A knowledgeable person from the family-law practice group — a supervising attorney or an authorized designee — who can answer questions about the group's jurisdiction, positions, escalation rules, and review requirements. - Any existing playbooks, templates, source-of-truth documents, or standard-form documents the group already uses, so they can be referenced or cited in the profile. ## Do Not Use When - The group is actively working a live family-law matter. This skill configures the library; it does not support an open matter. - A `practice-profiles/family-law.md` already exists and is current. In that case this is a refresh, not a cold start — though the skill may still be used to rebuild the profile deliberately. - No authorized person is available to answer. Do not complete the interview with guessed or inferred answers; record all gaps as `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholders. - The purpose is to handle a specific family-law matter (use the appropriate matter-level skill for that task). ## Legal Safety Rules - Produce draft legal work product for attorney review. This is not legal advice. - Never guess or infer an answer to any interview question. If the interviewee cannot answer a question, record `[CONFIRM: answer required from practice group]` and move on. - The filled profile is a draft. It must be reviewed and explicitly approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it governs any AgentCounsel work product. - Do not invent standard positions, clause preferences, escalation thresholds, or review rules. Record only what the interviewee provides. - Do not include client-specific facts, client names, matter identifiers, or privileged details in the profile. The profile is a reusable group-level configuration, not a matter record. - Do not state or imply that any threshold, position, or rule in the profile satisfies a legal requirement under any jurisdiction. Jurisdiction-specific legal obligations are for the attorney to verify. - Flag every item the interviewee defers or leaves open with a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder so the reviewer can see exactly what is unresolved. ## Workflow **Stage 1 — Jurisdictions** Ask the interviewee: - In which states or countries does the group practice family law most frequently? - Does the group regularly engage with UCCJEA (custody jurisdiction), UIFSA (support jurisdiction), or other interstate / international frameworks? - Does the group regularly engage with Hague Convention (international child-abduction) matters? - Are there sector-specific populations the group regularly engages with — military families, families with international ties — that require jurisdiction-specific knowledge? - Are there jurisdictions or matter types the group treats as out of scope, requiring specialist outside counsel? Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: jurisdiction not yet specified]`. **Stage 2 — Client and Team Context** Ask the interviewee: - Does the group represent primarily one party in family-law matters (and which side, if any default), guardians ad litem, or both? - What types of family-law matters does the group handle most frequently — divorce, custody, support, premarital / postnuptial agreements, adoption, domestic-violence protective orders, paternity? - How is the team structured — partners, associates, paralegals, victim-advocate or social-work resources? - How does the group coordinate with custody evaluators, financial neutrals, mental-health professionals, and victim advocates? - Are there client categories — high-conflict, high-net-worth, families with domestic-violence indicators, blended families — that require special handling? Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: client/team context not yet specified]`. **Stage 3 — Escalation Thresholds** Ask the interviewee: - Which matters automatically require escalation — domestic-violence indicator, capacity concern, multi-state custody question, international child-removal risk, child-welfare report, abuse allegation? - Are there asset-value or income-level thresholds that trigger escalation to senior practitioners? - When does a safety concern (escalating threats, removal risk, weapon access) require immediate intervention? - Which engagement types — emergency custody petitions, protective-order responses, child-welfare-agency engagements — require attorney review regardless of stage? - Who is the designated escalation contact for family-law matters, and what is the expected turnaround? Are there safety-specific escalation pathways? Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: escalation threshold not yet specified]`. **Stage 4 — Preferred Output Style** Ask the interviewee: - Should family-law work product default to memo format, intake-summary format, chronology format, or settlement-issues format? - What level of detail does the practice group expect — executive summary, full fact-and-issue analysis, both layered? - Are there house style rules for safety-flagging, contested-matter flagging, or open-items lists in family-law work product? - Does the group produce custody-schedule organizers, settlement-issue catalogues, or hearing-preparation outlines in standard formats? - Are there particular deliverable types — DV safety referrals, custody evaluations, asset-and-debt schedules — for which the group has mandatory format requirements? Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: output style preference not yet specified]`. **Stage 5 — Source-of-Truth Documents** Ask the interviewee: - What is the group's authoritative client-intake instrument, and where is it stored? - Is there a chronology-template library, and how is it kept current? - What document governs the group's jurisdiction-specific custody-rules reference? - Are there safety-screening protocols and victim-advocate-referral resources the group treats as authoritative? - Does the group maintain a financial-disclosure framework (asset / debt schedules, income-and-expense forms) tied to applicable court forms? Record answers and document names. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: source document not yet identified]`. **Stage 6 — Standard Positions and Playbooks** Ask the interviewee: - What is the group's default posture on emergency custody — what facts trigger an emergency petition, what defaults govern the response? - What is the group's default relocation posture — preferred process, custody-evaluation involvement, when contested? - What is the group's default abuse-screening protocol — at every intake, situational, or other? - What is the group's default approach to parenting coordinators, special masters, and other neutral roles? - What is the group's default approach to settlement vs. litigation framing in initial intake? Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: standard position not yet specified]`. **Stage 7 — Attorney Review Requirements** Ask the interviewee: - At what stage does attorney review of family-law work product become mandatory — initial intake, any safety-screening output, any draft pleading, any settlement document? - Are there work-product types for which attorney review is always required regardless of stage — any filing, any custody arrangement, any settlement, any domestic-violence-related document? - What is the designated reviewer's role — handling attorney, supervising attorney, partner? - What is the expected turnaround for standard family-law review, and how are urgent reviews (emergency custody, protective-order responses) handled? What is the after-hours escalation pathway? - Is there a formal sign-off step before any filing, settlement, or court-ordered evaluation? Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: review requirement not yet specified]`. **Stage 8 — Prohibited Assumptions** Ask the interviewee: - Are there facts agents must never assume without explicit confirmation — that custody is uncontested, that no DV is present, that all assets are disclosed, that a parenting plan is enforceable in another state? - Are there family-law-specific risks — domestic-violence escalation, child-removal risk, capacity concern, undisclosed asset, undue influence — where an agent must stop and escalate rather than reason through independently? - Are there matter types where agents must never proceed beyond intake without direct attorney involvement — protective-order matters, DV-indicator matters, child-welfare matters, capacity-concern matters? - Are there prior incidents — adverse outcomes, court findings, bar inquiries — that should be encoded as explicit prohibitions for agents working on family-law matters? Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: prohibited assumption not yet specified]`. **Stage 9 — Assemble the Draft Profile** Compile all answers into a filled draft of `practice-profiles/family-law.md`, populating each of the eight profile sections. For every item that was not answered, insert a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder with enough context for the reviewer to understand what needs to be supplied. Append a list of all open placeholders so the reviewing attorney can see at a glance what remains unresolved. ## Output Format Deliver: 1. **Filled draft of `practice-profiles/family-law.md`** — all eight sections populated with answers from the interview. Every unanswered item is a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder. 2. **Open-items list** — an explicit enumeration of every placeholder inserted, with the stage and question it corresponds to, so the reviewing attorney can resolve them efficiently. Label the entire output: **Draft legal work product for attorney review. Not legal advice. This profile draft must be reviewed and approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it is relied upon.** ## Attorney Verification Checklist - [ ] All eight profile sections have been reviewed by a supervising attorney or authorized practice-group representative. - [ ] Safety-screening protocol is accurately recorded and an immediate-escalation pathway is named. - [ ] Jurisdiction coverage — including UCCJEA, UIFSA, and Hague — is accurately recorded. - [ ] Emergency-custody and protective-order escalation thresholds are accurately recorded and any associated deadlines are marked `[deadline verification required]`. - [ ] Confidentiality framework protects victim and child information at the appropriate level. - [ ] Mandatory-reporter obligations are accurately recorded `[verify jurisdiction]`. - [ ] No client-specific facts, matter identifiers, or privileged details appear in the profile. - [ ] All `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholders have been resolved or explicitly accepted as pending. - [ ] The approved profile has been saved to `practice-profiles/family-law.md` and its effective date recorded. - [ ] A process for periodic profile review and update has been identified.