Brief Section Drafter

/brief-section-drafter

1. Load ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/CLAUDE.md → case theory, house style.
2. Follow the workflow and reference below.
3. Draft in house format/tone/citation style. Consistent with theory.
4. Output: draft section. Flag every place a fact or cite needs verification.

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Brief Section Drafter

Witness statements for England & Wales — PD 57AC

If the user's jurisdiction includes England & Wales and they're asking for a trial witness statement for the Business & Property Courts (or any CPR-governed proceeding), PD 57AC applies. The statement must be in the witness's own words, must not contain argument, must identify the documents the witness used to refresh their memory, and must carry the required confirmation of compliance and the legal representative's certificate.

Drafting a narrative "as the witness" from a chronology, document set, or your account of the case is exactly what PD 57AC was designed to prevent. Courts are actively sanctioning AI-assisted witness statement drafting. If you ask me to do it, I won't.

What I WILL do: prepare question prompts to elicit the witness's actual recollection; capture and organize what the witness says (their words, not mine); generate the list of documents they were shown; run a PD 57AC compliance checklist against a statement they've drafted; draft the solicitor's certificate of compliance. I help you get the witness's evidence into the statement. I don't write the evidence.

For US depositions, declarations, and affidavits: different rules, but the same discipline applies. A declaration in the declarant's voice that the declarant didn't write is a credibility problem at best.

Purpose

A good brief section is consistent with the theory, cited to the record, written in house style, and checkable. This skill produces the first draft — emphasis on draft. Partner edits.

Written or oral?

Ask before drafting: "Is this for a written submission or oral argument?" They are different crafts:

• Written: thorough. Cover the points, develop the authority, anticipate the responses.
• Oral (rebuttal, closing, argument): strategic. Pick the 3-4 points that matter most. Concede or ignore the weak ones. Lead with your strongest. A tribunal remembers the first two minutes and the last two. "Too thorough" for oral advocacy reads as unfocused. If you're responding to a multi-issue submission, tell the user which issues you'd press and which you'd let go — that's the draft of the strategy, not just the words.

Record fidelity — quotes and pinpoints

Two rules that govern every citation and every quotation in advocacy drafting. The canonical statement lives in the plugin's CLAUDE.md shared guardrails; repeated here because this skill is the most common place the rule gets tested.

Verbatim quotes from the record must be verbatim. Never put quotation marks around words attributed to opposing counsel, a witness, the court, or any record document unless you have the exact passage in front of you and can cite to it. A quote that's almost right is worse than a paraphrase — it misrepresents the record, it's sanctionable if filed, and it will be caught. When you want to characterize what someone said but can't find the exact words:

• Paraphrase without quotation marks, attributing clearly: "Opposing counsel argued that X [verify against record — Tr. p. __]."
• Mark the placeholder: [verify exact quote — record cite pending]
• Never fill the gap. An invented quote, even one word, is a fabrication. The reviewer note must flag every [verify exact quote] in the output.

Before citing any passage with quotation marks, have the source open. If you're working from memory or a summary, no quotation marks.

Pinpoint cites must support the whole proposition. If the argument is "opposing counsel said X, Y, and Z" and you're citing one pinpoint, verify the pinpoint supports X AND Y AND Z. If it only supports Z, either (a) split the cite — "said X (Tr. p. 10), Y (Tr. p. 12), and Z (Tr. p. 15)" — or (b) narrow the proposition to what the pinpoint actually supports. A cite that supports part of a claim is how a tribunal catches you stretching. It's the single most common way a lawyer's credibility erodes in front of a court. This is the "misgrounded citation" failure mode: the cite exists, the passage exists, but the passage doesn't support the proposition as stated.

Candor about weak arguments

When the law is against you, say so. When an argument is weak — the authority cuts the other way, the facts don't support it, the inference is a stretch — don't construct a shaky argument and present it as if it were solid. Flag it:

"This point is weak — [authority] cuts the other way. Consider whether to press it (here's how you'd frame it), concede and pivot to [stronger point], or drop it. [review — strategic call]."

Asserting a weak argument without flagging it erodes the lawyer's credibility with the tribunal and creates a candor problem (MR 3.1 — a lawyer must have a basis in law and fact). The draft should make the lawyer smarter, not confident about a bad position.

Citation extraction coverage

When this draft is cite-checked — by you, by another skill, or by a reviewer running through what you produced — the check must be exhaustive, not selective:

1. First pass: extract. Read the whole document and build a list of every citation — cases, statutes, regulations, record cites, secondary authority. Report the count: "Found [N] citations."
2. Second pass: check. Check each one against the source. Don't sample. Don't stop when you get tired.
3. Report coverage. At the end: "Checked [N] of [M] citations. [K] could not be retrieved — verify manually. [J] confirmed. [I] flagged as potential miscitations. [H] flagged as misgrounded (cite exists but doesn't support the proposition)."
4. When source text is unavailable, say "could not check," never "confirmed." A false positive ("this cite is fine" when you couldn't read the source) is worse than "couldn't check this one."
5. The hardest errors to catch are partial support. A cite that backs part of a claim but not all of it. Read the proposition the brief makes, read what the source actually holds, and compare element by element.

Echo vs repeat

Echo key framings; don't lift sentences. Consistency with prior submissions is good — it reinforces your theory of the case and makes the record coherent. But there's a line between echoing and repeating.

• Echo: use the same key terms, the same framing of the central issue, the same characterization of the other side's theory.
• Don't: lift whole sentences, re-use distinctive phrasings so often the tribunal notices, or repeat the same argument verbatim without advancing it.

A rebuttal that sounds like a re-read of the opening loses ground. The draft should advance the argument, not restate it.

Load context

~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/CLAUDE.md → case theory, house style (citation format, structure, tone, length norms).

Conflicts gate — unbypassable. Before drafting, check ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/matters/_log.yaml for the matter slug this skill is being invoked on. If the matter is not in _log.yaml, refuse and route:

"I don't see [matter slug] in the matter log. Run /litigation-legal:matter-intake first so the conflicts check runs and the matter workspace is set up. I won't draft substantive work product on a matter that hasn't been intaken — the conflicts check is the gate."

Do not proceed on an unintaken matter. Intake is what runs conflicts, sets up matter.md / history.md, and writes the _log.yaml row this skill reads from. Skipping it produces work in an unmanaged location and bypasses the firm's conflicts discipline.

Workflow

Step 1: Which section?

Step 2: Theory check

Before writing: what does this section need to accomplish for the theory?

• Statement of facts: Frame the story so our theory is the natural reading.
• Argument: Connect the law to the facts in a way that supports the theory.

If the section you're about to draft contradicts the theory — stop. Either the theory is wrong or the section approach is wrong. Flag it, don't paper over it.