Is UK Legal Research free?

Yes, UK Legal Research is free to use.

How do I install UK Legal Research?

UK Legal Research supports both local and remote installation. For local use, install it via pip (uvx) and add the configuration to your AI app. For remote access, add the server URL to your MCP configuration.

What AI apps work with UK Legal Research?

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

Back to Browse

UK Legal Research MCP Server

by BOUCH

Business ToolsModerate6.8LocalRemote

Free

Case law, legislation, Hansard, bills, votes, committees, and HMRC — one MCP server.

About

UK Legal Research gives AI agents structured access to UK legal and parliamentary sources. Search case law from TNA Find Case Law, look up Acts of Parliament and Statutory Instruments, search Hansard debates, track parliamentary bills and voting records, query select committee evidence, parse and resolve legal citations (OSCOLA), look up HMRC VAT rates and Making Tax Digital status, and search HMRC guidance.

Security Report

6.8

Moderate6.8Moderate Risk

The uk-legal-mcp server is a well-architected legal research gateway with appropriate authentication patterns and reasonable permission scope for its business purpose. All 23 of 24 tools require no API keys; only HMRC MTD status checking requires optional credentials that default to sandbox mode. The codebase demonstrates good security practices: no hardcoded secrets, proper input validation via Pydantic, careful error handling, and read-only access to public UK legal data sources. Minor code quality observations (broad exception handling in citation parsing, HTML stripping regex) do not meaningfully impact security posture. Supply chain analysis found 1 known vulnerability in dependencies (0 critical, 1 high severity). Package verification found 1 issue.

4 files analyzed · 6 issues found

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

Permissions Required

This plugin requests these system permissions. Most are normal for its category.

HTTP Network Access

Connects to external APIs or services over the internet.

env_vars

Check that this permission is expected for this type of plugin.

File System Read

Reads files on your machine. Normal for tools that analyze or process local data.

How to Install & Connect

Available as Local & Remote

This plugin can run on your machine or connect to a hosted endpoint. during install.

Getting Started

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

1"Find recent Supreme Court cases on landlord and tenant disputes"
2"What does Section 3 of the Housing Act 1988 say?"
3"Search Hansard for debates about AI regulation in 2024"
4"How did MPs vote on the Online Safety Act?"
5"Parse these citations and resolve them to legislation.gov.uk"
6"What is the VAT rate for energy-saving materials?"
7"Find evidence submitted to the Housing Select Committee on leasehold reform"
8Tool: case_law_search — Search UK court judgments
9Tool: legislation_search — Find Acts and Statutory Instruments
10Tool: parliament_search_hansard — Search Hansard debates
11Tool: bills_search_bills — Search parliamentary bills
12Tool: votes_search_divisions — Search Commons/Lords division records
13Tool: citations_parse — Parse OSCOLA legal citations from text
14Tool: hmrc_get_vat_rate — Look up UK VAT rates by category

Documentation

View on GitHub

From the project's GitHub README.

uk-legal-mcp

UK legal research sources for your AI assistant.

uk-legal-mcp connects ChatGPT, Claude, VS Code, Cursor, and other MCP-aware clients to UK case law, legislation, Hansard, bills, votes, committees, OSCOLA citation parsing, and HMRC guidance. It returns primary source text and citation metadata so your agent can build evidence packs you can check and footnote.

No API keys are required for the legal sources. HMRC's authenticated Making Tax Digital endpoint is optional.

For best results, tell your assistant to use the uk-legal-mcp server and not to answer from memory when a UK legal source can be checked.

Quick Start

Use the hosted MCP endpoint:

https://uk-legal-mcp.fly.dev/mcp

For clients that use mcpServers JSON:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uk-legal": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://uk-legal-mcp.fly.dev/mcp"
    }
  }
}

For local stdio use:

uvx uk-legal-mcp

Claude Desktop local config:

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

If a hosted tool stops responding, refresh the server from your client's Apps / Customise menu. For very large Acts, local mode can be more reliable because it uses your own IP rather than a shared cloud IP.

Try This First

After connecting the server, start a fresh chat and ask:

I am checking a UK legal source. Only use uk-legal-mcp. Find the source, give me the source URL, and tell me what metadata I should check before relying on it.

For legal work, ask for an evidence pack rather than a bare answer:

Only use uk-legal-mcp. Give me the source text or source summary, the source URL, citation metadata, and any caveats about jurisdiction, version, or uncertainty.

See the lawyer guide for ready-to-run prompts.

What It Covers

Source area	What your assistant can check
Case law	UK judgments from TNA Find Case Law, including neutral citations, court, date, judgment metadata, paragraph reads, and in-judgment search.
Legislation	Acts and Statutory Instruments from legislation.gov.uk, including tables of contents, sections, territorial extent, in-force signals, and point-in-time reads.
Parliament	Hansard debates and contributions, debate-to-division chains, member biographies, column references, and petitions.
Bills	Parliamentary Bills, stages, sponsors, publications, and bill history.
Votes	Commons and Lords divisions, counts, results, and per-member voting records.
Committees	Select committees, memberships, oral evidence, and written evidence.
Citations	OSCOLA-style citation parsing and resolution to canonical sources.
HMRC	VAT rate lookups, GOV.UK HMRC guidance search, and optional authenticated MTD VAT status checks.

The server also exposes judgment://, legislation://, and hansard:// resources for source text that is too large to return in a single search result.

Full details are in the tool reference and upstream API reference.

Examples

Legislation check: the assistant finds the Worker Protection Act duty, commencement position, territorial extent, and source links.

ChatGPT answer using uk-legal-mcp to summarise the Worker Protection Act duty, commencement, territorial extent, and source links

Parliamentary evidence: the assistant follows a House of Lords debate into a division result for an Automated Vehicles Bill amendment.

ChatGPT answer using uk-legal-mcp to connect an Automated Vehicles Bill Hansard debate to the division result for Lord Liddle's Amendment 28

More examples are in the lawyer guide.

Using It Safely

uk-legal-mcp helps your AI assistant find and quote UK legal sources. It does not replace legal judgement.

Check jurisdiction. Legislation can apply differently in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. When reading a section, check the extent field before relying on it.
Check whether a provision is current. Some sections may be repealed, amended, prospective, or not yet in force. The server returns in-force and version-date information where the source provides it.
Verify citations before relying on them. Ask the agent to resolve case citations and Hansard volume/column references against the primary source.
Separate exact matches from nearby candidates. Case names and party names can be similar. A good answer should say which source was verified and which candidates were merely related.
Treat the result as an evidence pack. The server returns primary source text and citation metadata. Your agent can summarise it, but you decide how the law applies.

For Developers

Run the streamable HTTP server locally:

python -m src.gateway

Run the declarative FastMCP manifest for inspection/dev tooling:

fastmcp run
fastmcp inspect

fastmcp run is for inspection/dev only — it wraps the FastMCP runner directly and skips the production uvicorn shape (_HttpGuard, _AcceptNormalizer, proxy_headers) that python -m src.gateway wires for the Fly deployment. The _HttpGuard GET-SSE shim is required by claude.ai's web connector, so use python -m src.gateway for anything prod-like.

Use a local checkout over stdio:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "local-uk-legal": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--project", "<abs-path>", "uk-legal-mcp"],
      "env": { "VIRTUAL_ENV": "" }
    }
  }
}

Release notes live in CHANGELOG.md.