Reference · plugin fact sheet
litigation-legal
The ground-truth summary behind Module 4. Every line below was read from the plugin's actual files (version 1.0.2, checked 2026-06-22) — paths cite the live repo.
Identity
From .claude-plugin/plugin.json: “Manages the litigation portfolio — matters,
deadlines, holds, demands, outside counsel — and does the work: claim charts (patent and civil),
chronologies, depo prep, privilege logs, brief drafting. Adapts to how you work litigation: in-house,
firm, or solo.”
The 19 skills, by job
| Job | Skills |
|---|---|
| Setup | cold-start-interview (role-branching: in-house / firm-associate / solo), customize |
| The matter ledger | matter-intake (10-question intake behind a conflicts gate), matter-workspace, matter-briefing, matter-update, matter-close, portfolio-status (rollup + anomaly flags: overdue, stale >30d, high-risk without counsel, missing holds) |
| Inbound fire | demand-received (triage to substantial / debatable / weak / frivolous + 4 response options), subpoena-triage |
| Outbound | demand-intake, demand-draft (FRE 408 settlement-communication gate) |
| Compliance machinery | legal-hold (--issue / --refresh / --release / --status), oc-status (outside-counsel check-ins) |
| Evidence & advocacy | chronology (🔴/🟡/⚪ significance tagging, privilege gate), claim-chart (patent + civil elements, gap detection), brief-section-drafter (learns house style from a seed brief), deposition-prep, privilege-log-review |
The 1 subagent
docket-watcher — scheduled sweep of every active matter's docket via
CourtListener/Trellis: weekly by default, daily when a hearing is <14 days out or a matter is
risk: critical. It flags new filings and computes candidate deadlines — and then states its own
limit: “Computed deadlines are leads, not calendar entries… Missing a court deadline has malpractice
consequences. A licensed attorney verifies every computed deadline against the court's actual rules… This
agent is upstream of that decision, not a substitute for it.”
The 7 bundled connectors
CourtListener and Trellis (research — this is one of only four plugins
that bundle a research tool, so citations can come back verified instead of [verify]-tagged),
Everlaw and Aurora (eDiscovery), TopCounsel
(outside-counsel network), Slack, Google Drive.
State it keeps on your machine
~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/litigation-legal/CLAUDE.md— the practice profile. The plugin hard-stops without it: “STOP before doing substantive work… every command in this plugin depends on it.”matters/_log.yaml— one structured row per matter (type, role, risk, materiality, exposure range, counsel, conflicts status, legal hold, deadlines…).portfolio-statusreads the whole thing.matters/<slug>/matter.md+history.md— one folder per matter (a slug is the matter's short, hyphenated folder name the plugin generates from the matter name + year, e.g.sortwell-v-sablefield-2026): the narrative file plus an append-only history — “If a past history entry was wrong, don't edit it. Append a new entry that references and corrects it. The record of the correction is as important as the correction itself.”inbound/,demand-letters/,oc-status/— working folders for triages, drafts, and counsel check-ins.
Conventions worth knowing
- Three inline markers, defined as “not disclaimers — they are action items”:
[CITE: …](authority placeholder — counsel fills before sending),[VERIFY: …](unconfirmed fact),[SME VERIFY: …](a judgment call needing a licensed attorney in the relevant jurisdiction). - The conflicts gate (matter-intake): “STOP. This is a gate.” No matter files are created until conflicts are run, marked pending with an owner and date, or bypassed with documented rationale that becomes a permanent record.
- Role-branching setup: the cold-start interview asks who you are first — in-house (risk matrix, reserve/disclosure thresholds, settlement-authority ladder, outside-counsel bench), firm associate (case theory, “the pivot fact,” a seed brief to learn house style), or solo (caseload, fee structure, SOL tracking). One plugin, three different practices.
- Triage, not opinion: demand-received marks its own output “READ FOR TRIAGE, NOT OPINION.”
Sources: the plugin's CLAUDE.md, agents/docket-watcher.md,
matters/_README.md, and the skill files — all under
litigation-legal/ on GitHub.