build-guide

/build-guide

1. Load ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-aid/CLAUDE.md → role (must be Managing attorney / ED), practice areas, jurisdiction, supervision style, funder restrictions.
2. Use the workflow below.
3. If the user is not the managing attorney, stop and redirect (staff run /legal-aid:onboard).
4. Walk through: practice area → intake questions → escalation posture → review gates → funder-restriction overrides → cross-area watch list → local rules → draft templates.
5. Write ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-aid/guides/<practice-area>.md. Create the guides/ directory if needed.
6. Offer a test run — execute /legal-aid:client-intake or /legal-aid:draft under the configured posture so the managing attorney sees what a staffer sees.

/legal-aid:build-guide
/legal-aid:build-guide housing

Multiple guides are fine — one per practice area. Re-run to revise. Edit the guide file directly for quick changes.

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Build Guide: Managing-Attorney-Authored Practice-Area Guide

Purpose

The legal-aid plugin ships with sensible defaults across practice areas. But every office runs each practice area its own way: which intake questions matter, which red flags warrant immediate escalation, which funder restrictions bind hardest in this area, which cross-area issues most often co-occur, which local courts have quirks the staffer needs to know. A generic plugin handles this generically, which means the staff spend their first months correcting what the tool assumed.

This skill captures the managing attorney's specific judgment about a practice area into a guide file that every staff-facing skill reads at runtime. Output across /client-intake, /draft, /memo, /research-start, and /status becomes calibrated to this office's actual practice in this area, not the generic template.

Audience: managing attorney or ED. Staff don't run this — they run /onboard and then the practice skills.

Role gate

Before starting, confirm the user is the managing attorney or ED. If not:

This setup writes office-level configuration that affects how every staffer's work product is structured. It must be done by the managing attorney or ED. If you're a staff attorney, paralegal, or intake specialist, run /legal-aid:onboard to come up to speed on the office's current configuration.

If confirmed, continue.

Load context

~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-aid/CLAUDE.md → office profile, practice areas list, jurisdiction(s), supervision style, escalation default, funder restrictions, conflict-check process.

If CLAUDE.md is missing or has placeholders: "Office setup hasn't been completed yet. Run /legal-aid:cold-start-interview first — every skill, including this one, depends on it."

The walkthrough

Step 1: Practice area selection

If a practice area was passed as an argument, confirm and proceed. If not, ask:

Which practice area? Your office handles [list from CLAUDE.md]. You can also author a guide for a sub-area within a practice area (e.g., "eviction defense" within housing) if that distinction matters for your office.

If the user names a practice area the office doesn't handle per CLAUDE.md, ask whether to add it to the office's practice areas (which routes back to /cold-start-interview --redo practice-areas) or whether this is a one-off guide that doesn't change the office's primary scope.

Step 2: Intake questions specific to this practice area

The /client-intake skill ships with generic per-practice-area templates. The office probably has additional or replacement questions that matter for the work it does. Ask:

What are the 5-10 questions you want every intake in this practice area to surface — beyond the generic template? Think about: the facts that determine whether the matter is in scope; the facts that signal urgency; the facts that flag cross-area issues; the facts that determine which funder this matter belongs under.

For each question:

• The question text the staffer asks (or the prompt the skill uses)
• Why it matters in this office
• What answer should trigger a flag, and what kind of flag

Capture in the guide. The intake skill will append these to the generic template for this practice area.

Step 3: Red flags for this practice area

What in an intake or screening should set off alarm bells specifically in this practice area? Different from generic urgency markers — these are things that mean "stop, this needs the managing attorney before going further."

Examples by practice area:

• Housing: Lockout already occurred; child welfare involvement; subsidy-program-specific issues (Section 8 termination, public housing one-strike, LIHTC); landlord retaliation pattern
• Family: Active DV with imminent threat; child welfare involvement; international parental abduction; immigration status of any party
• Consumer: Wage garnishment active; military servicemember (SCRA); fraud or identity theft basis; bankruptcy filed by another party
• Immigration: Removal hearing within 30 days; ICE detention; criminal-immigration interaction; minor without guardian
• Public benefits: Termination effective within 14 days; overpayment claim with criminal referral; disability case with imminent medical need
• DV: Imminent threat indicators; firearm in household; abuser is law enforcement; protection order violation pattern

Capture each red flag with: how it's spotted, what the immediate action is, who gets pinged.

Step 4: Escalation posture for this practice area

The office set a default escalation posture at cold-start (handle / escalate / refer). For this practice area, is the posture the same, or different?

Your office's default escalation posture is [default from CLAUDE.md]. For this practice area, do you want the same, or different?

• Handle (skill produces work product, staff review and route): Best for high-volume routine matters where the work is well-documented and staff are experienced.
• Escalate (skill produces structure, flags complex elements for managing-attorney review before continuing): Best when the practice area mixes routine and complex matters and you want a human check before any complex element progresses.
• Refer (skill scopes the matter, flags as outside AI-assisted scope, routes to referral): Best for practice areas where the office prefers low-AI-touch — typically heightened-confidentiality or high-stakes (some DV configurations, criminal-adjacent matters, certain immigration scenarios).

If different from default, capture and confirm. Some practice areas commonly run "escalate" even when the office defaults to "handle" (DV, immigration removal). Confirm explicitly.

Step 5: Review gates

In this practice area specifically, what triggers managing-attorney review before output goes out, beyond your office-wide supervision style?

Common practice-area-specific review gates:

• Housing: any motion for stay of execution, any settlement involving an admission
• Family: any motion involving custody, any settlement involving parenting time
• Consumer: any settlement, any agreement to a payment plan
• Immigration: any filing involving the executive (asylum, withholding), any declaration
• DV: any pleading mentioning the abuser by name, any disclosure of safe address
• Public benefits: any administrative-hearing-day filing

Capture in the guide. These overlay on top of the office's general supervision style — they're additive, not replacement.

Step 6: Funder-restriction overrides for this practice area

For each funder named in Part 0 of cold-start, ask whether any funder-restriction applies specifically to this practice area in a way that should change skill behavior:

Does any funder restriction bite particularly hard in this practice area? Examples: LSC § 1626 alien restrictions hit immigration matters most directly; LSC class-action restrictions hit civil rights matters; LSC fee-generating restrictions hit consumer matters; VAWA confidentiality requirements hit DV matters; HUD funding may restrict housing matters to specific subsidy contexts.

For each restriction-area pairing identified, capture:

• The funder + restriction
• How it manifests in this practice area
• What flag the skills should raise, and at what point in the workflow
• What the default routing is (escalate, refer, document and proceed)

Step 7: Cross-area watch list

What other practice areas most often co-occur with this one? An intake in this practice area should surface possible cross-area issues — what should the skill be listening for?

Examples by primary area:

• Housing → DV (residence dispute often involves), public benefits (subsidy implications), consumer (utility shutoff), family (custody affected by housing instability)
• Family → DV, immigration (status of any party), public benefits (child support reporting), housing (parental relocation)
• Consumer → bankruptcy (already filed?), public benefits (exempt income), employment (wage garnishment)
• Immigration → DV (VAWA / U / T visa pathways), family (status of children), public benefits (eligibility implications)
• Public benefits → housing (subsidy interaction), family (child support reporting), consumer (collection of benefits)
• DV → family (custody, divorce), housing (lease termination, safe address), immigration (VAWA, U visa)

Capture the watch list. The intake skill uses it to flag cross-area issues in this practice area's intakes.

Step 8: Local rules and quirks

What does a staffer need to know about how this practice area runs in your jurisdiction(s) that isn't in the generic plugin or in your CLAUDE.md local-rules ingest?

Examples:

• Specific judge preferences ("Judge X does not accept agreed orders without a hearing on the record")
• Court office quirks ("File pro se housing answers at window 3, not the regular filing window")
• Agency conventions ("The state SNAP fair-hearing scheduling office responds faster to emailed requests than fax")
• Local bar pro bono panel referrals ("Above 175% FPL family matters refer to the Wake County Bar pro bono panel")

Capture as a local-knowledge appendix to the guide. The relevant skills surface these in their outputs when the practice area matches.

Step 9: Draft templates for this practice area

The plugin's /draft command works from practice-area templates. What documents does staff draft most often in this practice area?

Confirm the 3-8 documents already in CLAUDE.md, then ask:

• Are there office-specific templates the office uses that aren't in the generic plugin?
• Are there local-jurisdiction templates (specific to one county, one court, one judge)?
• Should any common document have a per-funder variant (e.g., a different demand letter for LSC-funded matters vs IOLTA-funded)?

For each template, ask the managing attorney to upload an example. The /draft command will use these as starting points for first drafts in this practice area.

Writing the guide

Write to ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/legal-aid/guides/<practice-area>.md. Structure:

# [Practice area] guide

*Written by [managing attorney name] on [date]. Read at runtime by `/client-intake`, `/draft`, `/memo`, `/research-start`, and `/status` whenever the matter's practice area matches.*

## Intake questions (additional to generic template)

[per Step 2]

## Red flags

[per Step 3]

## Escalation posture

[handle / escalate / refer, with reason if different from office default]

## Review gates

[per Step 5]

## Funder-restriction overrides

[per Step 6]

## Cross-area watch list

[per Step 7]

## Local rules and quirks

[per Step 8]

## Draft templates

[per Step 9, with paths to uploaded exemplars]

After writing

1. Show the managing attorney the file as written and confirm.
2. Offer a test run: "Want to see what a staffer sees? I can run /legal-aid:client-intake or /legal-aid:draft against a hypothetical matter so you can see the configured behavior."
3. Note that the guide takes effect immediately for new matters in this practice area; existing in-flight matters continue with whatever posture they started under.

What this skill does NOT do

• Change office-level configuration. CLAUDE.md governs office-wide settings; this skill writes a guide for one practice area. To change office-wide settings, run /legal-aid:cold-start-interview --redo.
• Author legal substance. The skill captures procedural and configuration judgment, not doctrine. The doctrine is in the staffer's research and the managing attorney's review.
• Validate the practice area against state law. The managing attorney is responsible for ensuring the configured guide is accurate for the jurisdictions the office operates in.
• Run for non-managing-attorney users. Staff who attempt to run this get redirected to /onboard.