How do I install Bailii?

Bailii is a local plugin. Install it using PyPI package: bailii-mcp and add the generated configuration snippet to your AI app's MCP config file. Then restart your AI app.

What AI apps work with Bailii?

Bailii uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and works with any MCP-compatible AI app, including Claude, ChatGPT / Codex, Gemini, Copilot, Cursor, and more.

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Bailii MCP Server

by BOUCH

Business ToolsLow Risk10.0Local

Free

Search UK court judgments on BAILII — runs locally because BAILII blocks cloud IPs.

About

BAILII UK Case Law gives AI agents direct access to the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) — the largest free archive of UK court judgments. Search across UK Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, and specialist tribunals. Extract judgment text by section for clean, focused reading. Runs locally via `uvx` because BAILII blocks cloud IP ranges, so hosted MCP servers can't reach it. No API key required.

Security Report

10.0

Low Risk10.0Low Risk

Valid MCP server (0 strong, 4 medium validity signals). No known CVEs in dependencies. Package registry verified. Imported from the Official MCP Registry. Trust signals: trusted author (12/12 approved).

4 files analyzed · 1 issue found

Security scores are indicators to help you make informed decisions, not guarantees. Always review permissions before connecting any MCP server.

How to Install

Add this to your MCP configuration file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "io-github-paulieb89-bailii-mcp": {
      "args": [
        "bailii-mcp"
      ],
      "command": "uvx"
    }
  }
}

Getting Started

Once installed, try these example prompts and explore these capabilities:

1"Search BAILII for Supreme Court cases on landlord and tenant"
2"Find BAILII judgments citing Donoghue v Stevenson"
3"Pull the full text of [2024] UKSC 12 from BAILII"
4"Extract section 4 of the judgment in Caparo v Dickman"
5Tool: bailii_search — Search UK court judgments on BAILII
6Tool: bailii_get_judgment — Retrieve full judgment text
7Tool: bailii_get_section — Extract a specific numbered section from a judgment

Documentation

View on GitHub

From the project's GitHub README.

BAILII MCP Server

Search UK case law on BAILII. Retrieve judgments with automatic section extraction (summary, conclusions, discussion, background). Runs locally — BAILII blocks cloud IPs.

Install

Using uv (recommended)

No install needed — uvx runs it directly from PyPI:

uvx bailii-mcp

Using pip

pip install bailii-mcp
bailii-mcp

Requires Python 3.10+.

Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bailii": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["bailii-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add bailii -- uvx bailii-mcp

VS Code

Add to .vscode/settings.json or use the MCP panel:

{
  "mcp": {
    "servers": {
      "bailii": {
        "command": "uvx",
        "args": ["bailii-mcp"]
      }
    }
  }
}

Using pip instead of uvx

If you installed via pip install bailii-mcp, use "command": "bailii-mcp" and "args": [] instead.

From source

git clone https://github.com/paulieb89/bailii-mcp.git
cd bailii-mcp
pip install -e .

What You Can Ask

Once connected, just ask Claude naturally:

"Search BAILII for cases about HMO licensing"
"Find recent whistleblowing employment tribunal cases"
"Get the summary of Chinn v Hoilund-Carlsen"
"What did the court hold in that case?"
"Show me the discussion section"

Tools

Tool	What it does
`bailii_search`	Full-text search across all BAILII courts. Returns titles, citations, and links.
`bailii_get_judgment`	Retrieve judgment text. Defaults to summary + conclusions (~5000 chars).
`bailii_list_courts`	List available UK courts (UKSC, EWCA, EWHC, UKUT, EAT, etc).

Section Extraction

Judgments are large (30-100KB). By default, only the summary and conclusions are returned. Ask for more if you need it:

Default: summary + conclusions (5000 chars)
Specific section: "show me the discussion" → pulls just that section
Full text: "get the complete judgment" → returns everything

Sections detected: summary, conclusions, held, discussion, background

Why Local?

BAILII blocks requests from cloud servers and datacenters. This server runs on your machine, so requests go through your residential IP.

For case law that doesn't need BAILII specifically, uk-legal-mcp provides case law via the National Archives API — hosted on Fly.io, no local setup needed.

This BAILII server is useful when you need:

Employment tribunal decisions (EAT coverage is stronger on BAILII)
Older cases not yet in the TNA database
Specific tribunals with better BAILII indexing

Notes

BAILII terms prohibit bulk downloading — use for targeted research only
Be reasonable with request rate
Section extraction depends on judgment formatting — not all judgments have clear section headers

Licence

Apache 2.0

Author

Paul Boucherat — building MCP servers for UK property, legal, and project controls.

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Use Cases

Search UK case law across all BAILII-indexed courts (Supreme Court
Court of Appeal
High Court
First-tier Tribunal
Upper Tribunal
Employment Tribunal)
Retrieve full judgment text for any case
Extract specific numbered sections/paragraphs from a judgment for focused reading
Covers England and Wales
Scotland
Northern Ireland
and Ireland
Runs locally via `uvx bailii-mcp` — no cloud hosting needed
Complements TNA Find Case Law (uk-legal-mcp) which has newer 2023+ judgments but not BAILII's deeper historical archive
No API key required — BAILII is free and open
Read-only — just queries BAILII's public pages