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

Money-bill origination under Article VII, federal preemption across the high-risk subject areas, and the workflow around a politically sensitive request.

  • 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 corpus behind the Police Continuation Acts tool.

  • 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.