Build Guide

/build-guide

1. Load ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-clinic/CLAUDE.md → role (must be Supervising attorney), practice areas, jurisdiction.
2. Use the workflow below.
3. If the user is not the supervising attorney, stop and redirect (students run /legal-clinic:ramp).
4. Walk through: practice area → intake questions → pedagogy posture → review gates → cross-plugin checks → local rules.
5. Write ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-clinic/guides/<practice-area>.md. Create the guides/ directory if needed.
6. Offer a test run — run /legal-clinic:draft under the configured posture so the supervisor sees what a student sees.

/legal-clinic:build-guide

Multiple guides are fine — one per practice area. Re-run this command to revise. Edit the guide file directly for quick changes.

Build Guide: Supervisor-Authored Practice-Area Guide

Purpose

The supervisor guide is the dial that turns student-facing skills from "get the work done" into "teach the student to do the work." Every student-facing skill in this plugin reads the guide before producing output: intake asks the questions the supervisor wants asked, drafting skills pick a pedagogy posture (assist / guide / teach), review gates route to the supervisor on the items the supervisor cares about, and cross-plugin checks wrap other-plugin skills in a supervision layer.

This skill helps a supervisor author that guide in 5-10 minutes per practice area. The guide is plain markdown at a well-known path — edit it by hand anytime.

Audience: the supervising attorney. Not students. Students run /legal-clinic:ramp and then the student-facing skills; they don't author guides.

Work-product header

Every output from this skill is a supervisor-facing configuration artifact, not student work product. Do NOT prepend [AI-ASSISTED DRAFT — requires student analysis and attorney review] to the output of this skill — that label is for student outputs. The guide file this skill writes is a supervisor configuration document; it sits next to CLAUDE.md in the plugin config directory, not in a matter workspace.

Key things your guide should address

Offer this as a checklist the supervisor can skip through or use as the table of contents for the interview:

• What does a student need to know before they touch a case? (Ethics rules, confidentiality, their scope of authority)
• What are the 3-5 most common mistakes students make in this practice area, and how should the skill catch them?
• When must the student stop and get your sign-off? (Filing, sending to a client, making a representation, advising on strategy)
• What's the reading level for client communications? (6th grade is the usual target for legal aid)
• What local rules, forms, or deadlines should every student know?
• When should the skill teach vs. do? (Per document type — you can set a default and override per type)

Walk through the checklist at the start of the interview so the supervisor knows what's coming and can flag which items they already have strong views on versus which they want to think through. Skip any item the supervisor waves off; note it in the guide as "not specified — skill uses defaults."

Workflow

Step 1: Check role

This is a supervisor skill. Read ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-clinic/CLAUDE.md → ## Who's using this → Role. If the role is not "Supervising attorney," say:

This skill is for supervisors — it configures how the student-facing skills behave. If you're the supervisor, make sure your practice profile role is set to "Supervising attorney" in /legal-clinic:cold-start-interview. If you're a student, this isn't the right skill for you — run /legal-clinic:ramp to onboard, or ask your supervisor to author a guide for your clinic.

Stop if the role is not supervising attorney.

Step 2: Which practice area?

What clinic is this guide for? (Immigration / Housing / Family / Transactional / Criminal defense / Consumer / Other)

If the answer is "Other," ask for a short name — that name becomes the filename (lowercase, hyphenated: immigration-removal-defense.md, transactional-nonprofit.md, etc.).

Check the practice areas listed in CLAUDE.md → ## Clinic profile → Practice areas. If the chosen practice area is not listed there, note it: "I'll write this guide, but your practice profile doesn't list [area] as one of your clinic's practice areas. That's fine — you can add it later with /legal-clinic:cold-start-interview --redo — but the student-facing skills won't route intakes to this area until the profile lists it."

If a guide already exists at ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-clinic/guides/<practice-area>.md, offer: "A guide for [area] already exists at [path]. Do you want to (a) revise it section-by-section, (b) start fresh and overwrite, or (c) see what's there first?"

Step 3: Intake questions

What should students ask a new client for this clinic type? I'll start with a generic intake for [practice area] — tell me what to add, remove, or change. What red flags should students look for? What makes a case a good fit for your clinic vs. a referral out?

Show the generic intake defaults for the practice area — use the same defaults that client-intake uses (Immigration: status, entry, prior applications, country conditions, family, criminal history, timeline urgency; Housing: housing type, what happened, lease, habitability, timeline; Family: relationship, issue, children, safety, orders, hearings; Consumer: debt type, contacts, documentation, filings, deadlines). For practice areas outside those four, ask the supervisor to describe the intake from scratch.

Capture: questions to add, questions to remove, questions to rephrase, red flags (a list), good-fit criteria (what makes this a case the clinic takes vs. refers out).

Step 4: Pedagogy posture

How much should the skills do vs. how much should the student do?

• Guide (default): The skill produces structure; students fill in substance; the skill gives feedback. Balanced — most clinics start here.
• Assist: The skill produces work product; students review and learn by editing. Fastest, least pedagogical. Good for high-volume clinics or when deadlines are tight.
• Teach: The skill doesn't produce work product — students draft, the skill gives Socratic feedback and only shows models after two attempts. Slowest, most pedagogical. Good for seminar-style clinics or when learning is the primary goal.

You can set this per document type (e.g., teach for client letters, assist for file memos).

Capture the default posture for the practice area, and any per-document overrides. Per-document settings the skills read:

• pedagogy_posture_default: assist | guide | teach
• pedagogy_posture_client_letter: [override]
• pedagogy_posture_memo: [override]
• pedagogy_posture_draft: [override]

If the supervisor names a document type the skills don't currently have, record the intended posture in a pedagogy_posture_other: block with a note — future skills can read it.