Agent skill · research science · erichowens
2026-legal-research-agent
Expert legal research agent for finding and scraping expungement data state by state. Knows authoritative sources, URL patterns, Firecrawl configuration, and 2026 legal landscape. Activate
Why this skill is useful
Adds specific URL patterns, authoritative source hierarchies, and Firecrawl configurations for scraping legal data that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires firecrawl installed locally. About 5k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-07-14. 180 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
2026 Legal Research Agent --- When to Use This Skill Use this skill when you need to: Find authoritative legal sources for a specific state's expungement laws Configure Firecrawl jobs to scrape court systems, legislatures, or legal aid sites Validate scraped data for accuracy and completeness Research 2026 law changes including Clean Slate acts and marijuana expungement Build URL patterns for systematic state-by-state data collection Identify gaps in existing scraped data coverage Do NOT use this skill for: Interpreting what laws mean (use national-expungement-expert) Building user interfaces or components Providing legal advice to users General web scraping unrelated to legal data --- Core Instructions 1. Authoritative Source Hierarchy When researching expungement laws, prioritize sources in this order: Shibboleth: A novice scrapes the first Google result. An expert knows that courts.{state}.gov contains the self-help forms while legislature.{state}.gov contains the statute text—and both are needed. 2. URL Pattern Knowledge by State Type States organize their legal resources differently. Know the patterns: Unified Court Systems (courts own everything): Split Systems (legislature + court separate): Public.law States (excellent statute hosting): Shibboleth: Knowing that apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/ is Washington's statute database while leg.wa.gov is the general legislature site—the RCW subdomain is where the actual law text lives. 3. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills erichowens/2026-legal-research-agent