uk-case-law

UK Case Law MCP Server provides Claude with tools to search and retrieve United Kingdom case law from The National Archives. The server exposes two main tools: uklaw_search, which lets you query across courts and tribunals (covering judgments from 2003 onwards) with optional filters such as query terms, legal_area, court, year_from, year_to, limit, and page; and uklaw_get_case, which retrieves the full text of a selected case using a citation or document URI, with optional parameters to specify paragraph ranges and whether to include metadata like judges, court, and date. You can combine these tools to locate relevant cases quickly and then pull full judgments for deeper analysis. The API returns results in Atom/XML format with full-text in Akoma Ntoso (LegalDocML) format, providing structured and reusable legal content for downstream tasks.

To use these tools, configure your MCP client (e.g., Claude Desktop) to point at the uk-case-law MCP server. Then issue search queries such as finding recent High Court employment decisions or filtering by a specific court or legal area. When you find a case of interest, call uklaw_get_case with the case citation or URI to retrieve the complete, properly formatted text, optionally including metadata. The server respects the National Archives API limits and provides pagination to access larger result sets.

Example workflows include:

• Searching for patent-related cases in the High Court and exporting a list of citations for review.
• Retrieving the full text of a landmark UKSC decision with accompanying metadata to understand the judges and procedural history.
• Filtering results by year and court to study trends in a particular jurisdiction over time.

Prerequisites:

• Install Bun ( https://bun.sh ) as the runtime for this MCP server.
• A Git client (git) to clone the repository.

Setup and run:

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/georgejeffers/uk-case-law-mcp-server.git cd uk-case-law-mcp-server

2. Install dependencies (via Bun): bun install

3. Run tests (if provided): bun test

4. Start the server: bun start

Claude Desktop configuration (optional):

• Add the MCP server to Claude Desktop with the following configuration, pointing to your local server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uk-case-law": {
      "command": "bun",
      "args": ["run", "/path/to/uk-case-law-mcp/src/server.ts"]
    }
  }
}

Note: This configuration assumes you are running the server locally and have Bun available in your environment.

Notes and tips:

• This MCP server relies on The National Archives Find Case Law API. It supports judgments from 2003 onwards and returns results in Atom/XML with full text in Akoma Ntoso format. No authentication is required from the API, but you should respect rate limits.
• The server exposes two tools: uklaw_search for querying and filtering cases and uklaw_get_case for retrieving full judgments with optional metadata.
• Supported courts include Supreme Court (UKSC), Court of Appeal (EWCA Civ, EWCA Crim), High Court (various divisions), and Tribunals (e.g., EAT, UKUT variants).
• If you deploy behind a firewall or behind a proxy, configure network access to The National Archives API accordingly. Ensure the MCP server can reach the TNA API endpoints.
• For Claude Desktop integration, ensure the path to the server script is correct in your config. Using Bun as the runtime is recommended here, matching the project’s setup.
• If you encounter parsing issues with Atom/XML responses, verify the API endpoint availability and consider implementing a retry/backoff strategy in your client integration.