AusLaw MCP

AusLaw MCP

Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Australian and New Zealand legal research. Searches AustLII for case law and legislation, retrieves full-text judgements with paragraph numbers preserved, and supports OCR for scanned PDFs.

Status: ✅ Full-featured with AGLC4 citation service, jade.io authentication, and security hardening

Features

Current Capabilities

• ✅ Case law search: Natural language queries across all Australian and NZ jurisdictions
• ✅ All jurisdictions: Commonwealth, all States/Territories (VIC, NSW, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, NT, ACT), and New Zealand
• ✅ Intelligent search relevance: Auto-detects case name queries vs topic searches
  • Case name queries (e.g., "Donoghue v Stevenson") use relevance sorting
  • Topic queries (e.g., "negligence duty of care") use date sorting for recent cases
• ✅ Multiple search methods: Title-only, phrase, boolean, proximity searches
• ✅ Pagination: Retrieve additional pages of results with offset parameter
• ✅ Legislation search: Find Australian and NZ legislation
• ✅ Primary sources only: Filters out journal articles and commentary
• ✅ Citation extraction: Extracts neutral citations [2025] HCA 26 and reported citations (2024) 350 ALR 123
• ✅ AGLC4 citation formatting: Format, validate, and generate pinpoint citations per AGLC4 rules
• ✅ jade.io authenticated fetch: Fetch full judgment text from jade.io using your session cookie
• ✅ jade.io search: Case search via proposeCitables GWT-RPC (reverse-engineered); results merged with AustLII, deduplicated by neutral citation. Requires JADE_SESSION_COOKIE.
• ✅ Paragraph blocks: [N] paragraph markers extracted as structured blocks for pinpoint citations
• ✅ Authority-based ranking: Results ranked by court hierarchy (HCA > FCAFC > FCA > state courts)
• ✅ Multiple formats: JSON, text, markdown, or HTML output
• ✅ Document retrieval: Full text from HTML and PDF sources (AustLII, jade.io)
• ✅ OCR support: Tesseract OCR fallback for scanned PDFs
• ✅ SSRF protection: URL allowlist restricts fetches to AustLII and jade.io only
• ✅ Rate limiting: 10 req/min for AustLII, 5 req/min for jade.io

Roadmap

• ✅ jade.io search: Implemented via reverse-engineered proposeCitables GWT-RPC — requires JADE_SESSION_COOKIE
• 🔶 BarNet Jade integration: Requires contacting BarNet for API access

See docs/ROADMAP.md for the full development history and future plans.

Quick Start

Local Development

git clone https://github.com/russellbrenner/auslaw-mcp.git
cd auslaw-mcp
npm install
npm run dev  # hot reload for local development

To build for production:

npm run build
npm start

Docker Deployment

# Build the Docker image
docker build -t auslaw-mcp:latest .

# Run with Docker Compose
docker-compose up

# Or run directly
docker run -it --rm auslaw-mcp:latest

See docs/DOCKER.md for detailed Docker deployment instructions.

Kubernetes (k3s) Deployment

# Build and import image to k3s nodes
docker build -t auslaw-mcp:latest .
docker save auslaw-mcp:latest -o auslaw-mcp.tar

# Deploy to k3s cluster
kubectl apply -f k8s/

See k8s/README.md for complete Kubernetes deployment guide.

MCP Registration

Configure your MCP-compatible client (eg. Claude Desktop, Cursor) to launch the compiled server.

For Claude Desktop, edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "auslaw-mcp": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/auslaw-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Replace /path/to/auslaw-mcp with the actual path to your installation.

Example Queries for AI Assistants

Once the MCP is connected, you can ask an AI assistant like Claude natural language questions. Here are examples organised by use case:

Finding Recent Decisions

"What cases were decided by Australian courts today?"

"Show me the latest Federal Court decisions from this week"

"Find recent Victorian Supreme Court cases about contract disputes"

"What are the newest High Court judgments?"

Researching Legal Topics

"Find Australian cases about duty of care in professional negligence"

"Search for cases dealing with unfair dismissal in the construction industry"

"What are the leading cases on misleading and deceptive conduct under the ACL?"

"Find cases about breach of directors' duties in the last 2 years"

"Search for NSW cases involving defamation on social media"

Finding Specific Cases

"Find the Mabo case"

"Look up Donoghue v Stevenson"

"Find the High Court decision in Palmer v McGowan"

"Search for Re Wakim - the constitutional case about cross-vesting"

Comparing Jurisdictions

"Compare how Victoria and New South Wales courts have treated non-compete clauses"

"Find Queensland cases about adverse possession"

"What's the leading New Zealand case on unjust enrichment?"

Legislation Research

"Find the Privacy Act"

"Search for legislation about workplace health and safety in Victoria"

"What Commonwealth legislation deals with competition law?"

"Find the New Zealand equivalent of the Australian Consumer Law"

Deep Research Tasks

"Find cases that have considered section 52 of the Trade Practices Act and summarise how courts have interpreted 'misleading and deceptive conduct'"

"Research the development of the 'reasonable person' test in negligence across Australian jurisdictions"

"Find all High Court cases about constitutional implied freedoms in the last 10 years and identify the key principles"

Document Retrieval

"Fetch the full text of [2024] HCA 1 and summarise the key holdings"

"Get the judgment in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) and explain the doctrine of native title it established"

Available Tools

search_cases

Search Australian and New Zealand case law.

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| query | Yes | Search query (e.g., "negligence duty of care", "Mabo v Queensland") || jurisdiction | No | Filter: cth, vic, nsw, qld, sa, wa, tas, nt, act, federal, nz, other || limit | No | Max results 1-50 (default 10) || sortBy | No | auto (default), relevance, or date || method | No | auto, title, phrase, all, any, near, boolean || offset | No | Skip first N results for pagination (e.g., 50 for page 2) || format | No | json (default), text, markdown, html |

Search Methods:| Method | Description | Best For ||--------|-------------|----------|| auto | AustLII decides | General use || title | Search case names only | Finding specific cases by name || phrase | Exact phrase match | Legal terms of art || all | All words must appear | Precise searches || any | Any word matches | Broad searches || near | Words near each other | Conceptual searches || boolean | Raw SINO query syntax | Power users |

Examples:

Find a specific case:

{
  "query": "Donoghue v Stevenson",
  "method": "title",
  "limit": 5
}

Recent NSW cases on a topic:

{
  "query": "adverse possession",
  "jurisdiction": "nsw",
  "sortBy": "date",
  "limit": 10
}

Exact phrase search:

{
  "query": "duty of care",
  "method": "phrase",
  "jurisdiction": "cth",
  "limit": 20
}

Pagination (get results 51-100):

{
  "query": "contract breach",
  "limit": 50,
  "offset": 50
}

search_legislation

Search Australian and New Zealand legislation.

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| query | Yes | Search query || jurisdiction | No | Filter: cth, vic, nsw, qld, sa, wa, tas, nt, act, nz, other || limit | No | Max results 1-50 (default 10) || sortBy | No | auto (default), relevance, or date || method | No | auto, title, phrase, all, any, near, legis, boolean || offset | No | Skip first N results for pagination || format | No | json (default), text, markdown, html |

Example:

{
  "query": "Privacy Act",
  "jurisdiction": "cth",
  "method": "legis",
  "limit": 10
}

fetch_document_text

Fetch full text from a case or legislation URL. Supports AustLII HTML, PDF with OCR fallback, and jade.io authenticated fetch via GWT-RPC (requires JADE_SESSION_COOKIE).

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| url | Yes | URL of the document (AustLII or jade.io) || format | No | json (default), text, markdown, html |

Example:

{
  "url": "https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.html"
}

format_citation

Format an Australian case citation per AGLC4 rules.

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| title | Yes | Case name, e.g. Mabo v Queensland (No 2) || neutralCitation | No | Neutral citation, e.g. [1992] HCA 23 || reportedCitation | No | Reported citation, e.g. (1992) 175 CLR 1 || pinpoint | No | Pinpoint reference, e.g. [20] || style | No | combined (default), neutral, or reported |

Example:

{
  "title": "Mabo v Queensland (No 2)",
  "neutralCitation": "[1992] HCA 23",
  "reportedCitation": "(1992) 175 CLR 1",
  "pinpoint": "[64]"
}

Output: Mabo v Queensland (No 2) [1992] HCA 23, (1992) 175 CLR 1 at [64]

validate_citation

Validate a neutral citation by checking it exists on AustLII.

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| citation | Yes | Neutral citation to validate, e.g. [1992] HCA 23 |

Returns: { valid, canonicalCitation, austliiUrl, message }

generate_pinpoint

Fetch a judgment from AustLII and generate a pinpoint citation to a specific paragraph.

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| url | Yes | AustLII document URL || paragraphNumber | No* | Paragraph number to locate || phrase | No* | Phrase to search for within paragraphs || caseCitation | No | Case citation to prepend (e.g. [1992] HCA 23) |

*At least one of paragraphNumber or phrase is required.

Example:

{
  "url": "https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.html",
  "phrase": "native title",
  "caseCitation": "[1992] HCA 23"
}

Output: { paragraphNumber: 64, pinpointString: "at [64]", fullCitation: "[1992] HCA 23 at [64]" }

search_by_citation

Find a case by its citation. If a neutral citation is detected, validates against AustLII directly; otherwise falls back to text search.

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| citation | Yes | Citation or case name, e.g. [1992] HCA 23 or Mabo v Queensland || format | No | json (default), text, markdown, html |

resolve_jade_article

Resolve metadata for a jade.io article by its numeric ID.

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| articleId | Yes | jade.io article ID (integer) |

jade_citation_lookup

Generate a jade.io lookup URL for a given neutral citation.

Parameters:| Parameter | Required | Description ||-----------|----------|-------------|| citation | Yes | Neutral citation, e.g. [2008] NSWSC 323 |

Jurisdictions

Running Tests

npm test

Test scenarios include:

1. Negligence and duty of care - Personal injury law searches
2. Contract disputes - Commercial law and breach of contract
3. Constitutional law - High Court constitutional matters
4. Employment law - Unfair dismissal and workplace relations
5. Property and land law - Native title and land rights disputes

Project Structure

src/
├── index.ts              # MCP server & tool registration (9 tools)
├── config.ts             # Configuration management
├── constants.ts          # Citation patterns, court codes, reporters
├── errors.ts             # Custom error classes
├── services/
│   ├── austlii.ts        # AustLII search and authority scoring
│   ├── citation.ts       # AGLC4 citation formatting, validation, pinpoints
│   ├── fetcher.ts        # Document retrieval (HTML, PDF, OCR, jade.io)
│   ├── jade.ts           # jade.io article resolution and enrichment
│   └── jade-gwt.ts       # GWT-RPC utilities (buildAvd2Request, encodeGwtInt, parseAvd2Response)
├── utils/
│   ├── formatter.ts      # MCP response formatting (json/text/markdown/html)
│   ├── logger.ts         # Structured levelled logging
│   ├── rate-limiter.ts   # Token bucket rate limiter (AustLII, jade.io)
│   └── url-guard.ts      # SSRF protection (HTTPS-only, allowlisted hosts)
└── test/
    ├── jade.test.ts       # jade.io integration tests
    ├── scenarios.test.ts  # End-to-end search scenarios (live network)
    ├── fixtures/          # Static HTML fixtures for deterministic tests
    ├── performance/       # Performance benchmarks
    └── unit/              # Unit tests (~163 test cases)
        ├── austlii.test.ts
        ├── austlii-mock.test.ts
        ├── citation.test.ts
        ├── config.test.ts
        ├── constants.test.ts
        ├── errors.test.ts
        ├── fetcher.test.ts
        ├── fetcher-mock.test.ts
        ├── formatter.test.ts
        ├── jade-gwt.test.ts
        ├── logger.test.ts
        ├── rate-limiter.test.ts
        └── url-guard.test.ts

plans/                    # Session implementation plans (git-tracked)
k8s/                      # Kubernetes deployment manifests
docs/                     # Architecture, Docker, and roadmap docs

Deployment

Docker

Quick start:

./build.sh              # Build Docker image
docker-compose up       # Run locally

See docs/DOCKER.md for detailed Docker deployment instructions.

Kubernetes (k3s)

Quick start:

./build.sh              # Build and export image
# Import to k3s nodes (see k8s/README.md)
./deploy-k8s.sh         # Deploy to cluster

See k8s/README.md for complete k3s deployment guide and DEPLOYMENT_CHECKLIST.md for a comprehensive deployment checklist.

Configuration

All configuration can be customized via environment variables:

• AUSTLII_SEARCH_BASE - AustLII search endpoint
• AUSTLII_REFERER - Referer header
• AUSTLII_USER_AGENT - User agent string
• AUSTLII_TIMEOUT - Request timeout (ms)
• OCR_LANGUAGE - Tesseract OCR language
• OCR_OEM, OCR_PSM - OCR engine settings
• DEFAULT_SEARCH_LIMIT - Default search results
• MAX_SEARCH_LIMIT - Maximum search results
• DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT - Default format (json/text/markdown/html)
• DEFAULT_SORT_BY - Default sort order (auto/relevance/date)
• JADE_SESSION_COOKIE - jade.io authenticated session cookie (see below)

See src/config.ts for defaults and .env.example for a template.

jade.io Authenticated Access

jade.io requires a subscription. To enable authenticated document fetching:

1. Log in to jade.io in your browser (Chrome recommended).
2. Open DevTools (F12) and go to the Network tab.
3. Navigate to any article on jade.io (e.g. https://jade.io/article/68901).
4. In the Network tab, click any request to jade.io, then open the Headers pane.
5. Under Request Headers, find the Cookie header and copy its full value.The value includes multiple cookies: IID=...; alcsessionid=...; cf_clearance=... (and possibly others).
6. Set the environment variable to the full cookie header value:

export JADE_SESSION_COOKIE="IID=abc123; alcsessionid=xyz789; cf_clearance=..."

For Kubernetes deployment, store it in a Secret (not a ConfigMap, as it is a credential):

kubectl create secret generic auslaw-mcp-secrets \
  --from-literal=JADE_SESSION_COOKIE="IID=abc123; alcsessionid=xyz789; cf_clearance=..."

Then reference it in your deployment manifest via envFrom or env[].valueFrom.secretKeyRef.

Security: Treat this value like a password. It grants full access to your jade.io subscription. Do not commit it to version control. Rotate it if compromised.

Data Sources and Attribution

This project retrieves legal data from publicly accessible databases.

AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute)

• Website: https://www.austlii.edu.au
• Terms of Use: https://www.austlii.edu.au/austlii/terms.html
• AustLII provides free access to Australian and New Zealand legal materials

jade.io

• Users must have their own jade.io subscription
• This tool does not bypass jade.io's access controls
• Respects jade.io's terms of service

Fair Use

Please use this tool responsibly:

• Implement reasonable delays between requests
• Cache results when appropriate
• Don't overload public legal databases
• Consider supporting AustLII through donations

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for full contribution guidelines, AGENTS.md for AI agent instructions, and SECURITY.md for responsible disclosure.

Key principles:

• Primary sources only (no journal articles)
• Citation accuracy is paramount
• All tests must pass before committing
• Real-world testing (hits live AustLII)

Disclaimer

This tool is for legal research purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

• Search results may not be comprehensive and should not be relied upon as a complete statement of the law
• AustLII databases may not include all decisions or the most recent updates
• Always verify citations and check for subsequent treatment of cases
• Legal advice should be sought from a qualified legal practitioner for any specific legal matter
• The authors and contributors accept no liability for any loss or damage arising from use of this tool

License

MIT