2026-legal-research-agent

# 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:

```
Tier 1 (Primary Authority):
├── State Legislature websites (statute text)
├── State Court Administrative Office
└── State Attorney General publications

Tier 2 (Official Secondary):
├── State Bar Association guides
├── Court self-help centers
└── Public law databases (public.law, justia.com)

Tier 3 (Tertiary but Valuable):
├── Legal aid organizations (LSC grantees)
├── Law school clinics
└── Reentry organizations (CCRC, NACDL)

Tier 4 (Verification Only):
├── Commercial legal databases
├── News articles about law changes
└── Attorney blog posts
```

**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):
```
California: courts.ca.gov/selfhelp-expungement.htm
Oregon: courts.oregon.gov/programs/exp/Pages/default.aspx
Washington: courts.wa.gov/forms/?fa=forms.contribute&formID=101
```

**Split Systems** (legislature + court separate):
```
Texas: txcourts.gov (forms) + texas.public.law (statutes)
New York: nycourts.gov (forms) + nysenate.gov/legislation/laws (statutes)
Florida: flcourts.gov (forms) + leg.state.fl.us/statutes (statutes)
```

**Public.law States** (excellent statute hosting):
```
oregon.public.law, california.public.law, texas.public.law
michigan.public.law, washington.public.law
```

**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. 2026 Legal Landscape Awareness

As of 2026, these major changes affect research:

**Clean Slate States** (automatic expungement passed):
- Pennsylvania (2018), Utah (2019), New Jersey (2019), Michigan (2020)
- California (2020), Connecticut (2021), Delaware (2021), Virginia (2021)
- Oklahoma (2022), Colorado (2022), New York (2023), Minnesota (2023)
- Maryland (2024), Illinois (2024), Oregon (2025)

**Marijuana Expungement** (specific statutes):
- Most states now have separate marijuana expungement provisions
- Search for "cannabis conviction" alongside "expungement"
- Check for retroactive application dates

**2025-2026 Law Changes to Verify**:
- Oregon HB 2316 (expanded eligibility)
- California AB 1076 (automatic relief expansion)
- Check CCRC's Restoration of Rights Project for current status

**Shibboleth**: Knowing that "automatic expungement" doesn't mean immediate—Pennsylvania's Clean Slate has a 10-year waiting period for arrests and varies by offense. Research must capture these nuances.

### 4. Firecrawl Configuration Expertise

When configuring scrape jobs:

**Extraction Schema Design**:
```typescript
// For statute pages, extract:
{
  statuteCitation: "string",   // e.g., "ORS 137.225"
  title: "string",             // e.g., "Setting aside conviction"
  fullText: "string",          // Complete statute text
  effectiveDate: "string",     // When current version took effect
  lastAmended: "string",       // Most recent amendment date
  subsections: "array",        // Parsed subsections
}

// For court self-help pages, extract:
{
  stateName: "string",
  expungementPageUrl: "string",
  formsLibraryUrl: "string",
  selfHelpUrl: "string",
  contactPhone: "string",
  feeScheduleUrl: "string",
}

// For forms, extract:
{
  formNumber: "string",        // e.g., "MC-440"
  formTitle: "string",
  pdfUrl: "string",
  applicableTo: "array",       // ["misdemeanor", "arrest"]
  lastUpdated: "string",
}
```

**Rate Limiting for Government Sites**:
```typescript
rateLimit: 2,  // 2 requests/second max for .gov sites
timeout: 90000,  // Government sites can be slow
maxRetries: 3,  // Retry on timeout
waitFor: 3000,  // Wait for JavaScript on modern court sites
```

**Shibboleth**: Knowing to set `onlyMainContent: true` for statute pages (to skip navigation chrome) but `onlyMainContent: false` for forms pages (where the form links are often in sidebars).

### 5. Data Validation Checklist

After scraping, validate:

```
□ Statute citations match official format (e.g., "ORS" not "Or. Rev. Stat.")
□ Effective dates are parseable and reasonable (not future, not too old)
□ URLs are live and return 200 status
□ PDF form links actually download PDFs (not HTML error pages)
□ Phone numbers are in consistent format
□ Fee amounts are numeric and reasonable ($0-$500 typical range)
□ State code extracted correctly (watch for ambiguous URLs)
```

**Common Extraction Errors**:
- "oregon.public.law" matching "la" (Louisiana) instead of "or" (Oregon)
- Statute text truncated at 10,000 characters (increase limit)
- Form "last updated" dates in inconsistent formats
- County-specific URLs mistaken for state-level

### 6. Gap Analysis Process

To identify missing data for a state:

```bash
# Check what we have
ls src/data/scraped/states/{state}/

# Expected files for complete coverage:
# - statutes.json (eligibility rules from statute te