Legal-HR Routing Protocol
Purpose
This skill defines how a Legal or HR matter is classified, routed to the right specialist agent, and coordinated when it crosses both domains. It exists so agents never work in silos when risk crosses a domain boundary, and so every handoff is controlled and auditable rather than free-form. It does not give legal or HR advice; routing is a recommendation that a human owner confirms.
When to use
- A maestro agent must classify an incoming matter and dispatch it.
- A specialist agent finds a matter has crossed into another domain.
- A matter triggers an escalation gate and must be paused.
- Legal and HR agents reach conflicting recommendations.
Communication principles
- One accountable human owner per matter. One primary agent per matter.
- Parallel review only when the matter genuinely crosses domains.
- No agent makes a final legal, employment, disciplinary, regulatory,
settlement, disclosure, or public-communication decision.
- All high-risk cross-domain matters produce a pause and escalate
recommendation unless sufficient documented controls already exist.
- Every handoff uses a
legal-hr-case-capsule. No free-form agent chatter. - Every handoff preserves context, uncertainty, evidence quality, and open
questions, and carries a do_not_do_list.
- Every handoff labels privilege sensitivity and privacy sensitivity.
- Every agent defaults to least-privilege access and minimum-necessary data.
Routing rules
- Contract, clause, indemnity, limitation of liability, DPA, procurement,
vendor, IP, confidentiality, termination rights → Legal contract / vendor / IP specialists.
- Privacy, data protection, cybersecurity-incident legal triage, employee data,
regulatory mapping, cross-border transfer, data retention → Legal privacy / data-protection specialist.
- Litigation hold, discovery, subpoena, investigation preservation, document
retention → Litigation / discovery specialist.
- Employee relations, discipline, misconduct, harassment, discrimination,
retaliation, grievance → HR employee-relations or HR workplace-investigations specialist.
- Performance warnings, termination readiness, PIP, manager documentation → HR
performance or HR termination-readiness specialist.
- Leave, accommodation, disability, medical information, return-to-work → HR
leave / accommodation specialist AND Legal employment-law specialist.
- Recruiting, compensation, pay equity, promotion, selection criteria, adverse
impact → HR recruiting / selection or HR compensation-equity specialist.
- Mixed Legal + HR matters route in parallel, with escalation to human
Legal / HR owners explicitly marked.
Overlap handoff matrix
Fifteen recurring cross-domain scenarios and their agent sets are defined in [references/handoff-matrix.md](references/handoff-matrix.md). Each row names the primary agent, the secondary agents, the escalation gate, and the mandatory do_not_do items.
Conflict-resolution protocol
When Legal and HR agents disagree, follow this order and stop at the first step that is unmet:
- Freeze any irreversible action.
- Preserve evidence; recommend a litigation hold if discovery risk exists.
- State the disagreement precisely — what each agent concluded and why.
- Separate legal risk from HR operational risk; do not collapse them.
- Identify the accountable human owner.
- Escalate to qualified Legal / HR leadership.
- Document unresolved assumptions and open questions.
- Produce options, not a single conclusion.
- Require human approval before any action.
- Log the decision path in the audit log.
References
- [Overlap handoff matrix](references/handoff-matrix.md) — the 15 scenarios,
agent sets, escalation gates, and do-not-do items.
Security notes
- Routing is a recommendation, never an authorization. The protocol never
approves, denies, or directs an adverse action.
- A matter is routed on sanitized signals. Never request medical detail,
government IDs, credentials, or protected-class data to classify a matter.
- When classification is ambiguous, route to a maestro agent and mark the
matter unclassified rather than guessing a specialist.