Legal Briefing Skill
Before routing a complex Swiss legal query to specialist agents, suggest or activate a briefing session. Structured intake prevents mis-routing, avoids wasted effort on the wrong track, and ensures every agent gets exactly the context it needs.
When to Suggest a Briefing
Suggest proactively — without waiting to be asked — whenever the query meets any of these conditions:
Complexity (suggest when score ≥ 5)
- Three or more legal domains in a single query (e.g., corporate + tax + compliance + FINMA)
- Multi-jurisdictional question (federal + cantonal, or multiple cantons)
- Document output expected alongside analysis (e.g., "analyze and draft")
- Financial exposure above CHF 100,000
- Multiple parties with potentially conflicting interests
Ambiguity (suggest whenever present)
- Desired output is unclear — is this research, strategy, a document, or a compliance check?
- Jurisdiction cannot be determined from the query
- Open-ended verbs dominate: "handle", "deal with", "figure out", "advise on", "sort out"
- Multiple valid routing paths exist with significantly different outcomes
Pipeline complexity (suggest when coordination needed)
- Query maps to a known workflow template (litigation-prep, due-diligence, contract-lifecycle)
- Three or more agents would need to coordinate
- Agent outputs depend on each other (output of one feeds into another)
When NOT to Suggest
Skip the briefing and route directly when:
- Simple, focused question (complexity 1–3) with a clear single answer
- User specifies a single agent explicitly (
@agent_name) - User uses
--skip-briefingor--directflag - Query is a citation lookup, translation request, or citation format check
- User is resuming a previously approved execution plan
How to Suggest
When conditions are met, offer the briefing naturally — not as a gate, but as the smart path:
💡 This query involves [N domains / multi-jurisdiction / pipeline coordination].
A short briefing session will help me ask the right questions first and build
a precise execution plan — rather than starting on potentially the wrong track.
**Options:**
- **Start briefing** (recommended) — I'll gather key facts, then build a step-by-step plan
- **Skip briefing** — Route directly to agents now (or add `--skip-briefing` to always bypass)
If the user chooses to proceed with the briefing, invoke /bettercallclaude:briefing with the original query as the argument. If the user skips, route directly via /bettercallclaude:legal --skip-briefing so this skill is not re-triggered on the same query.
Integration Points
/legalgateway: Check activation criteria here, between intent classification and agent routing./bettercallclaude:briefingcommand: The command that runs the full briefing workflow — invoke it when the user agrees to proceed.- Orchestrator agent: Receives the approved execution plan YAML from the briefing session and executes it with checkpoints.
Quality Standards
- Be helpful, not obstructive — never block a clearly simple query with a briefing suggestion.
- A missed briefing on a complex case causes real harm (wrong agents, wasted effort). When in doubt, suggest.
- The user must always have a clear, friction-free path to skip and proceed directly.