legal-briefing

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-briefing or --direct flag
• 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

• /legal gateway: Check activation criteria here, between intent classification and agent routing.
• /bettercallclaude:briefing command: 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.