Route Legal Research

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Someone asks which model for legal research / case analysis / a memo
• Best AI for legal reasoning
• Route this research task
• Is starting legal analysis without a fixed model

Example prompts

• “which model for legal research / case analysis / a memo”
• “best AI for legal reasoning”
• “route this research task”
• “/route-legal-research”

Requirements

• Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): AskUserQuestion, Read

Workflow steps

3 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

1. 1Infer, then ask only what's missing
2. 2Route using the scorecard
3. 3Output (use this exact shape)

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 045f738. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

  • AskUserQuestion
  • Read

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

  • vals.ai

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Route Legal Research loads about 1.5k tokens when it runs, and up to ~2.9k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 171 tokens; SKILL.md has 546 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~171

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.5k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~2.9k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from lawve-ai/awesome-legal-skills at commit 045f738, republished under its AGPL-3.0-or-later licence (© lawve-ai). 546 words, ~1,541 tokens.

name

route-legal-research

description

Pick the right LLM for LEGAL RESEARCH & ANALYSIS — issue-spotting, rule application, case/statute analysis, memos, and multi-step agentic research. Vendor-neutral routing grounded in mid-2026 benchmarks (Vals AI LegalBench across 124 models; Harvey Legal Agent Benchmark for agentic work). Asks up to 4 quick questions (cost, speed, accuracy/stakes, privacy/jurisdiction/language), then recommends a primary model + fallback + what to avoid + what a human must verify. Use when someone asks "which model for legal research / case analysis / a memo", "best AI for legal reasoning", "route this research task", or is starting legal analysis without a fixed model.

allowed-tools

AskUserQuestion, Read

version

0.1.0

triggers

which model for legal research or case analysis or a memo, best AI for legal reasoning, route this research task, which LLM for issue-spotting or rule…

license

AGPL-3.0-or-later

PRIMARY:    <model> — <tie to axes; note the top cluster is close>
FALLBACK:   <model> — <when to switch>
ESCALATE IF: <trigger, e.g. "novel/high-stakes question"> → <stronger model>
AVOID:      <model> — <why>  (e.g. Grok 4.5 / GPT-5.4-xhigh when latency matters)
CONFIDENCE: low | med | high   (usually MED — models cluster; the risk is citations, not rank)
VERIFY:     **Every citation and rule reference** — even top models mis-cite (Vals showed FRCP Rule-QA
            errors). Hallucinated authority is the #1 legal-AI failure. Human sign-off on client-facing work.

© lawve-ai, AGPL-3.0-or-later. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file (references) in skills/legal-ai-model-router-stephane-boghossian/skills/route-legal-research of lawve-ai/awesome-legal-skills.

• SKILL.md
• references/scorecard.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 045f738