UK Legal Research

uk-legal-mcp

UK legal research sources for your AI assistant.

uk-legal-mcp connects ChatGPT, Claude, VS Code, Cursor, and other MCP-aware clients to UK case law, legislation, Hansard, bills, votes, committees, OSCOLA citation parsing, and HMRC guidance. It returns primary source text and citation metadata so your agent can build evidence packs you can check and footnote.

No API keys are required for the legal sources. HMRC's authenticated Making Tax Digital endpoint is optional.

For best results, tell your assistant to use the uk-legal-mcp server and not to answer from memory when a UK legal source can be checked.

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Quick Start

Use the hosted MCP endpoint:

https://uk-legal-mcp.fly.dev/mcp

For clients that use mcpServers JSON:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uk-legal": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://uk-legal-mcp.fly.dev/mcp"
    }
  }
}

For local stdio use:

uvx uk-legal-mcp

Claude Desktop local config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uk-legal": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["uk-legal-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

If a hosted tool stops responding, refresh the server from your client's Apps / Customise menu. For very large Acts, local mode can be more reliable because it uses your own IP rather than a shared cloud IP.

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Try This First

After connecting the server, start a fresh chat and ask:

I am checking a UK legal source. Only use uk-legal-mcp. Find the source, give me the source URL, and tell me what metadata I should check before relying on it.

For legal work, ask for an evidence pack rather than a bare answer:

Only use uk-legal-mcp. Give me the source text or source summary, the source URL, citation metadata, and any caveats about jurisdiction, version, or uncertainty.

See the lawyer guide for ready-to-run prompts.

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What It Covers

Source area	What your assistant can check
Case law	UK judgments from TNA Find Case Law, including neutral citations, court, date, judgment metadata, paragraph reads, and in-judgment search.
Legislation	Acts and Statutory Instruments from legislation.gov.uk, including tables of contents, sections, territorial extent, in-force signals, and point-in-time reads.
Parliament	Hansard debates and contributions, debate-to-division chains, member biographies, column references, and petitions.
Bills	Parliamentary Bills, stages, sponsors, publications, and bill history.
Votes	Commons and Lords divisions, counts, results, and per-member voting records.
Committees	Select committees, memberships, oral evidence, and written evidence.
Citations	OSCOLA-style citation parsing and resolution to canonical sources.
HMRC	VAT rate lookups, GOV.UK HMRC guidance search, and optional authenticated MTD VAT status checks.

The server also exposes judgment://, legislation://, and hansard:// resources for source text that is too large to return in a single search result.

Full details are in the tool reference and upstream API reference.

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Examples

Legislation check: the assistant finds the Worker Protection Act duty, commencement position, territorial extent, and source links.

Parliamentary evidence: the assistant follows a House of Lords debate into a division result for an Automated Vehicles Bill amendment.

More examples are in the lawyer guide.

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Using It Safely

uk-legal-mcp helps your AI assistant find and quote UK legal sources. It does not replace legal judgement.

• Check jurisdiction. Legislation can apply differently in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. When reading a section, check the extent field before relying on it.
• Check whether a provision is current. Some sections may be repealed, amended, prospective, or not yet in force. The server returns in-force and version-date information where the source provides it.
• Verify citations before relying on them. Ask the agent to resolve case citations and Hansard volume/column references against the primary source.
• Separate exact matches from nearby candidates. Case names and party names can be similar. A good answer should say which source was verified and which candidates were merely related.
• Treat the result as an evidence pack. The server returns primary source text and citation metadata. Your agent can summarise it, but you decide how the law applies.

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For Developers

Run the streamable HTTP server locally:

python -m src.gateway

Run the declarative FastMCP manifest for inspection/dev tooling:

fastmcp run
fastmcp inspect

fastmcp run is for inspection/dev only — it wraps the FastMCP runner directly and skips the production uvicorn shape (_HttpGuard, _AcceptNormalizer, proxy_headers) that python -m src.gateway wires for the Fly deployment. The server answers GET /mcp with a native 405 (stateless, POST-only), so use python -m src.gateway for anything prod-like.

Use a local checkout over stdio:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "local-uk-legal": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--project", "<abs-path>", "uk-legal-mcp"],
      "env": { "VIRTUAL_ENV": "" }
    }
  }
}

Release notes live in CHANGELOG.md.