Correctly Drawn LawMassachusetts legislative drafting & interpretation

Skills

Forty-four skills. One drafting office's worth of judgment, written down.

Each skill is a structured instruction set for Claude: what to look for, in what order, against which authorities, in what form. Together they are the method. Separately they are the checklists a senior drafter carries in their head.

Interpretation and analysis

The core of the system: find the ambiguity before enactment, simulate how a court will resolve it, and score the fix.

  • stable b4-relational-phrase-lint

    Relational-phrase lint

    The cheapest check and the first one. Deterministic scan for three patterns that generate litigation: relational phrases ("in connection with," "relating to"), bare time references ("the first time," "initially"), and unclear cross-statutory references ("notwithstanding any other provision of law"). Runs before any ambiguity analysis.

  • v2.4 app1-ambiguity-detection

    Application 1 — Ambiguity detection

    Three-layer scan of a draft: definitional conflicts across chapters of the General Laws, regulatory overlays that diverge from the statute, and undefined terms that are defined elsewhere. Every alert is severity-ranked and dispositioned — add a definition, cross-reference, accept the ambiguity, or dismiss with a reason. Critical alerts that the sponsor wants to preserve go through a Challenge Protocol.

  • stable app2-interpretation-simulator

    Application 2 — Interpretation simulator

    Canon-constrained adversarial simulation. Given an ambiguous provision, generates the competing readings each side will argue, the canons that support each, a prediction of how the Supreme Judicial Court would resolve it, and disambiguating language. Calibrated against the Massachusetts statutory-interpretation corpus.

  • design locked app3-sufficiency-predictor

    Application 3 — Definition sufficiency

    Scores a proposed statutory definition from 0 to 100 across coverage, precision, clarity and conflict; flags twenty-seven drafting defects; compares against roughly 1,800 definitions in the General Laws and the Code of Massachusetts Regulations. Honors intentional delegation instead of penalizing it.

  • stable ma-statutory-analysis

    Statutory-interpretation case analysis

    Structured analysis of Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court statutory-interpretation opinions: which canons the court deployed, in what sequence, with what result — coded so the drafting system can learn from it.

  • stable scotus-statutory-analysis

    Supreme Court interpretive coding

    The same discipline applied to U.S. Supreme Court opinions: canon deployment, dictionary use, interpretive sequence, and comparison across justices and eras — including before and after Loper Bright.

  • stable two-tier-regulatory-delegation

    Two-tier delegation analysis

    Separates what an agency is authorized to do from what a regulated party is required to do, so "is hereby authorized to" is never misread as a mandate on anyone.

  • calibrated counterfactual-bias-spectrum

    Counterfactual bias spectrum

    Projects a current section of the General Laws across four contrastive versions — historical-exclusionary, facially-neutral but engineered to harm, the status quo, and equity-optimized — so structural bias becomes visible by contrast rather than in isolation. Certified on four cases plus a matched control pair, with its limits stated.

  • stable ag-summary-review

    Article 48 summary review

    Tests the fairness of an Attorney General's summary of an initiative petition against the petition itself, using the omission-versus-misstatement, materiality, and curability framework from Finfer v. Attorney General (2026).

  • stable resolution-certainty

    Resolution-certainty scoring

    Estimates how confidently a court resolved an interpretive question, from the coded signals in each case record, on the calibration scale Application 2 uses for its predictions.

Drafting and intake

From a policy request to a bill the General Court will recognize as correctly drawn.

  • stable ma-legislative-intake

    Legislative intake

    Captures form, rationale, policy intent, statutory interactions, and stage before any drafting begins. Policy intent has to be developed before the statutory-interaction check runs; the order is enforced.

  • stable ma-legislative-first-draft

    First draft

    Turns a policy concept, outline, or constituent request into a properly structured Massachusetts bill — General Laws amendments, special acts, home rule petitions, resolves, floor amendments — to the Legislative Research and Drafting Manual's standards.

  • stable ma-legislative-editor-checklist

    Editor's checklist

    The review a draft gets before it leaves the office: number formatting, cross-references, citations, structure, obsolete references, manual compliance.

  • stable bill-briefing-summary

    Bill briefing summary

    A one-page summary for a legislator: what the bill does, and its key provisions. Runs after the editor's checklist, not before.

  • stable parameter-modifying-hrp-reviewer

    Parameter-modifying petition review

    For home rule petitions and special acts that adjust an existing statute in place with "notwithstanding" framing — verifies the sentence counts, the cross-references, and the scope of what is actually locked out.

  • stable acts-resolves-index

    Acts and Resolves subject index

    Builds the annual subject index to the Massachusetts Acts and Resolves: fetch from the Legislature's API, extract entries, merge and sort, render to Word, and validate cross-reference integrity deterministically.

Constitutional and preemption review

Pre-enactment review of a bill against the Massachusetts Constitution, money-bill origination under Article VII, federal preemption across the high-risk subject areas, and the workflow around a politically sensitive request.

  • stable ma-constitutional-review

    Constitutional review

    Pre-enactment review of a bill or home rule petition across twelve modules: home rule, Article 97, Article 30, money-bill origination, anti-aid, Articles 48 and 63, Article 10, Articles 12 and 14, free speech, equal protection, and Article 17. Form defects come first, because a missing roll call or petition voids a sound bill; the memo then tiers the substantive risks and gives the enactment requirements and protective language.

  • stable money-bill-intake

    Money bill — intake

    Mechanical extraction: bill metadata, an inventory of General Laws citations, a scan for revenue-transfer language, and the worksheet the constitutional analysis runs on.

  • stable money-bill-inquiry

    Money bill — origination analysis

    Full Article VII analysis (Mass. Const. Pt. II, c. 1, § 3, art. 7): is this a money bill, could the Senate originate or add it, where did the revenue matter enter the vehicle. The label is not the test; the skill applies the test.

  • stable money-bill-remedy

    Money bill — remedy

    What to do once the defect is found: draft the point of order, choose between lay-aside and recommittal, decide whether to appeal a ruling of the Chair, frame origination as conference leverage, or assess whether an enacted act can still be challenged.

  • stable fund-reallocation-analysis

    Fund reallocation analysis

    For transfers touching the Stabilization Fund, pension liability, retiree benefits, constitutionally dedicated surtax revenue, or overrides of chapter 29 and 32 transfer requirements — presents the competing characterizations for a human to decide. It does not decide.

  • stable federal-preemption-review

    Federal preemption review

    Risk assessment and protective drafting across the subject areas where federal law most often displaces state legislation: telecommunications, ERISA, FDA, transportation, banking, arbitration, labor, environment, pesticides, tobacco, securities, insurance, alcohol.

  • stable immigration-preemption

    Immigration preemption

    Specialized analysis for legislation touching immigration enforcement, status verification, employer sanctions, and sanctuary policy, built on Arizona v. United States, Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, and Printz.

  • stable preemption-request-workflow

    Preemption request workflow

    The procedural and interpersonal side: how to handle a request that raises preemption without embarrassing the requester or the office.

Comparison and conference

Word-for-word paste-ups between chambers, conference triage, consolidation of special acts, and cross-jurisdiction surveys.

  • stable conference-paste-up

    Conference paste-up

    House and Senate versions side by side, aligned provision by provision down to the subclause, with word-level and punctuation-level differences marked. The document a conference committee actually works from.

  • stable bond-bill-paste-up

    Bond bill paste-up

    The capital-bill variant: statutory sections matched by language similarity rather than number, appropriation containers as header bands, and line items matched by number with word-level diffs.

  • stable charter-paste-up

    Charter paste-up

    For municipal charters and any legislation built on an ARTICLE/Section hierarchy rather than standard SECTION numbering.

  • stable budget-conference-triage

    Budget conference triage

    Sorts every section and line item of a conference report into review, clearance, or dropped, anchored to the conferees' crosswalks; flags dollar amounts that diverge from both branches; catches missing sections and transcription errors.

  • v2.2 legislative-substantive-comparison

    Substantive-versus-technical comparison

    Classifies Senate changes to a home rule petition as substantive or technical and determines what the municipality must do about it — re-vote, executive approval, or notice — anchored to art. 89, § 8 and Newell v. Rent Board of Peabody.

  • stable ma-statutory-consolidation

    Special act consolidation

    Consolidates a special act with every later amending act into one annotated text, verifies the amendment inventory against the session-law corpus, and produces the clean presentation edition for a legislator.

  • stable ma-legislative-comparison

    Cross-jurisdiction comparison

    Other states' statutes against a Massachusetts draft: fifty-state surveys, gap analyses, and comparison memos delivered as Word documents.

Amendment tracking

Classification and counsel assignment for floor amendments, from fifty to fourteen hundred.

  • stable amendment-tracker

    Budget amendment tracker

    Classifies and categorizes amendments to a general appropriation act, supplemental budget, or bond bill — by line item and by outside section — and builds the counsel assignment workbook. Scales to 1,400 amendments.

  • stable policy-amendment-tracker

    Policy amendment tracker

    The same for a policy bill with no appropriation sections: pure General Laws amendments, new chapters, session-law changes, and effective dates. Scales past 200.

Corpus research

Building and maintaining the case and session-law corpora the analysis runs on.

  • stable courtlistener-ma-corpus

    Massachusetts interpretation corpus

    Builds and incrementally updates the corpus of Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court statutory-interpretation decisions from CourtListener — one structured record per case, ready for analysis.

  • stable courtlistener-downloader

    Opinion downloader

    Bulk retrieval of court opinions by identifier or URL, with PDFs generated from plain text where none exists.

  • stable batch-validator

    Batch validator

    Three-layer gate on every analysis batch: mechanical integrity, executable coding-consistency rules, and substantive flags for human review. Catches truncation and omission before a batch closes.

  • stable police-corpus-watch

    Police continuation corpus watch

    Surfaces new or changed bills authorizing police service past 65 from the Legislature's API and diffs them against the police continuation corpus.

  • stable ma-case-renamer

    Case file renamer

    Names court files by case, citation, and the canon of construction at issue, so a research library stays searchable.

  • stable legal-case-output-formatter

    Case analysis formatter

    Renders a completed case analysis as an executive brief, a memorandum, a presentation, and a knowledge-base entry, with version control.

Citation and style

The Supreme Judicial Court Style Manual, applied.

  • stable sjc-style-manual

    SJC Style Manual

    The 2025–2026 Style Manual and all twelve appendices as a reference the other skills consult when a citation or style question comes up — and the engine behind the public Style Manual Assistant.

  • stable table-of-authorities

    Table of authorities

    Scans a document for every case, constitutional, statutory, and regulatory citation and inserts a formatted table — brief mode for court filings under Mass. R. A. P. 16(a)(4), draft mode for unenacted legislation with SECTION-number locators.

Records and handoff

Capturing institutional knowledge before it walks out the door, and searching the records a drafter needs.

  • stable meeting-knowledge-capture

    Institutional knowledge capture

    Turns a debrief, notes, or a recording into tagged, searchable knowledge entries organized by statute, drafting principle, bill number, and source — the antidote to expertise retiring.

  • stable legal-transcript-summary

    Transcript summary

    Summarizes attorney team calls into decisions, open questions, and action items, with identifying information redacted.

  • stable ma-registry-deeds-search

    Registry of Deeds search

    Deeds, mortgages, liens, plans, and easements across all twenty-one Massachusetts registry districts, including the independent county systems.

On what is listed here. This is the working catalogue as of September 2026. The skills themselves are not published; the descriptions are. General-purpose skills (document generation, presentation, spreadsheet, deployment) are omitted as not specific to this work.