lawyer-mcp

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for Legalize.dev: AI tools to query and understand legal frameworks across countries.

Goal: help an AI quickly answer questions about a country’s legal framework by querying Legalize.dev’s structured legislation API.

Status

Work in progress.

Data source

• API docs (Swagger): https://legalize.dev/api/docs
• OpenAPI spec: https://legalize.dev/openapi.json

Auth

Legalize.dev uses a bearer token in the Authorization header (see components.securitySchemes.ApiKeyAuth in the OpenAPI spec).

This server expects:

• LEGALIZE_API_KEY env var (either the raw leg_... token or the full Bearer leg_... value)

TLS / certificates (Codex on Windows)

If you hit errors like certificate verify failed: certificate signature failure, your Python/Codex environment may be missing the right CA bundle.

Options:

• Prefer installing/updating CA certificates in your environment (recommended).
• Set LEGALIZE_SSL_CERT_FILE=/path/to/ca-bundle.pem to point to a CA bundle.
• If certifi is installed, lawyer-mcp will automatically use it.
• As a last resort (NOT recommended): LEGALIZE_SSL_INSECURE=1 disables certificate verification.

Tools (MCP)

Tools are derived from https://legalize.dev/openapi.json.

Toolset selection

By default we expose a full read-only toolset. If you want the smallest useful surface area (to reduce model confusion), set:

• LEGALIZE_TOOLSET=minimal

Minimal toolset includes:

• legalize_openapi_summary — public summary of the OpenAPI spec (no API key)
• legalize_countries — list supported countries
• legalize_jurisdictions — list jurisdictions within a country
• legalize_laws — search/list laws within a country (single page)
• legalize_laws_all — same, but auto-paginates (best-effort flattening)
• legalize_law_meta — lightweight law metadata
• legalize_law_get — full law payload
• legalize_reforms — list reforms/diffs for a law

Full toolset additionally includes:

• legalize_commits — list git commits for a law
• legalize_law_at_commit — fetch law content at a commit SHA
• legalize_rangos — list legal hierarchy/ranks (rangos)
• legalize_stats — summary statistics per country (optional jurisdiction)
• legalize_account — current API key account/usage/limits (does not count against quota)

Dangerous tool (opt-in)

• legalize_rotate_key — rotate API key (invalidates current key). Disabled by default; enable with LEGALIZE_ENABLE_DANGEROUS_TOOLS=1.

Install

For now this is a single-file Python module (no external dependencies).

Option A: run from source (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/pugafran/lawyer-mcp.git
cd lawyer-mcp

# required
export LEGALIZE_API_KEY="leg_..."   # or "Bearer leg_..."

python3 -m lawyer_mcp

Option B: pipx / pip (if you have pip available)

pipx install git+https://github.com/pugafran/lawyer-mcp.git
# or: python -m pip install git+https://github.com/pugafran/lawyer-mcp.git

export LEGALIZE_API_KEY="leg_..."
lawyer-mcp

Configure in Claude Desktop (MCP)

1) Install the server (see Install above). 2) Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Developer → Edit MCP config. 3) Add a server entry like this:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lawyer": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "lawyer_mcp"],
      "env": {
        "LEGALIZE_API_KEY": "leg_...",
        "LEGALIZE_TOOLSET": "minimal"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. You should then see the legalize_* tools available.

Configure in OpenAI Codex / IDEs

Codex support depends on the client you are using (Codex CLI vs an IDE with MCP support).

If your Codex/IDE supports MCP servers via a JSON config, use the same command/env as above:

• command: python3
• args: -m lawyer_mcp
• env: LEGALIZE_API_KEY=...

If you tell me which “Codex” you mean (Codex CLI, VS Code extension, Cursor, etc.), I’ll add an exact, copy/paste config snippet for that client.

Run

# required
export LEGALIZE_API_KEY="leg_..."   # or "Bearer leg_..."

# optional (useful for tests/self-hosted mirrors)
# export LEGALIZE_BASE_URL="https://legalize.dev"
# export LEGALIZE_HTTP_RETRIES=2
# export LEGALIZE_HTTP_TIMEOUT=30

# optional (DANGEROUS): exposes `legalize_rotate_key`
# export LEGALIZE_ENABLE_DANGEROUS_TOOLS=1

python3 -m lawyer_mcp