Skip to main content
Glama
MCPServings

legal-mcp

by MCPServings
OverviewSchemaSourceRelated ServersDiscussionsAdmin
Python
Remote

legal-mcp

A remotely callable MCP server for US legal research. Baseline ("套壳") milestone: a thin, source-agnostic wrapper over CourtListener (the Free Law Project's 9M+ federal and state court opinions — free and public), exposed over the MCP streamable-HTTP transport.

It is deliberately the skeleton the value layers plug into later (multi-jurisdiction aggregation, full-text retrieval, citation graphs, freshness monitoring), mirroring the architecture of paper-mcp.

Design discipline

The server returns only primary-source text and citation metadata retrieved from the upstream API. It never lets a model generate legal content — agents build evidence packs they can check and footnote. (Legal hallucination has real sanctions; the server refuses to be the source of one.)

Related MCP server: courtlistener-mcp

Tools

Tool

What it does

search_cases(query, court='', sort_by='relevance')

Full-text case-law search.

search_all(query)

Aggregated search across every configured corpus, de-duplicated and re-ranked with Reciprocal Rank Fusion.

get_case(doc_id)

One case's full record (citations, judges, sub-opinion links).

read_opinion(opinion_id, format='text')

Full opinion text (text or html).

lookup_citation(text)

Resolve reporter citations in free text to real cases. Needs a token.

get_citation_network(doc_id)

Authorities a case relies on + how often it is later cited.

list_recent_cases(court)

Newest opinions in a court.

list_courts()

Common court ids.

list_legal_sources()

Available corpora.

Architecture

legal_mcp/
├── __init__.py            version string
├── models.py              LegalDoc — normalized, source-agnostic record
├── aggregate.py           pure RRF fusion + de-dup (by citation / case name)
├── server.py              FastMCP bootstrap + tool registrations
└── sources/
    ├── base.py            LegalSource Protocol (the swappable contract)
    ├── __init__.py        source registry + aliases
    └── courtlistener.py   CourtListener REST client → LegalDoc

Adding a jurisdiction (CAP, GovInfo, Congress, eCFR, OpenStates) is a new sources/<name>.py implementing the LegalSource contract plus one line in the registry — no server change.

Configuration

Env var

Default

Purpose

LEGAL_MCP_HOST

127.0.0.1

bind host

LEGAL_MCP_PORT

9500

bind port

LEGAL_MCP_PATH

/mcp

MCP endpoint path

COURTLISTENER_API_TOKEN

—

optional; raises rate limits and unlocks lookup_citation

Run

pip install -e .
legal-mcp                 # serves streamable-HTTP at 127.0.0.1:9500/mcp

Anonymous access already allows search and document fetch (rate-limited). Set COURTLISTENER_API_TOKEN for higher limits and citation lookup.

Roadmap

  1. MVP (this) — CourtListener case law: search, full text, citations.

  2. Add federal sources — eCFR (regulations), GovInfo (US Code), Congress (bills/votes/members), Federal Register, 26 USC/CFR (tax).

  3. Add CAP (Harvard) historical 50-state case law, fused with CourtListener.

  4. Add OpenStates (50-state legislation) for the state layer UK has no analogue for.

  5. Freshness pipeline — incremental watermark crawl + embeddings (slow data: ~hundreds of new docs/day, &lt;10 min GPU/day).

License

MIT © MCPServings. See LICENSE.

This server cannot be deployed

One endpoint for every MCP toolRayrun runs every MCP server behind one URL and holds the credentials. Each call is decided per client, tool, and argument, then recorded.ray.runAd

Maintenance

ActivityInactive
ResponsivenessNo issues

Resources

Related MCP Connectors

Related MCP Servers

  • CourtListener MCP Server

    UPSD1
    F
    license
    Not graded
    quality
    D
    maintenance
    A comprehensive Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for accessing CourtListener's legal database. Provides Claude Desktop with powerful legal research capabilities including court opinions, case dockets, judge profiles, and comprehensive legal analysis.
    1
    -

  • mcp-courtwatch

    haksanlulz
    A
    license
    A
    quality
    A
    maintenance
    MCP server for free U.S. case-law and court-docket search via CourtListener, providing tools for opinion search, docket lookup, citation verification, and more.
    10
    4 npm
    1
    MIT