# BAILII UK Case Law [Health: Active]

**Category:** ⚖️ Legal  
**Repository:** https://github.com/paulieb89/bailii-mcp  
**GitHub Stars:** 6  
**Views:** 2  
**Installs:** 0  
**Upvotes:** 0  
**Directory Page:** https://allmcps.com/mcp/bailii-uk-case-law

## Description
Search UK case law on BAILII — court judgments with section extraction. Runs locally.

## Tools
Capabilities this server exposes over MCP:

- **bailii_search** — Search BAILII for UK case law by keyword or phrase.

Searches the full BAILII database including UKSC, EWCA, EWHC, House of Lords,
tribunals, and Irish courts. Returns a list of matching cases with titles,
citations, and document paths to use with bailii_get_judgment.
- **bailii_get_judgment** — Retrieve a BAILII judgment, optionally filtered to a specific section.

Use the path returned by bailii_search. By default returns summary +
conclusions (or first 5000 chars if no sections detected). Use section='all'
for the complete text.
- **bailii_list_courts** — List the main UK courts and tribunals available on BAILII.

Returns court codes useful for constructing direct BAILII URLs or
understanding search results.

Returns:
    str: JSON object mapping court codes to court names.

## Claude Desktop Quick Installation
Install path detected from listing signals. Uses `uvx` (confidence: high):

```json
"mcpServers": {
  "bailii-uk-case-law": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": ["bailii-mcp"]
  }
}
```

## Documentation

## What the BAILII UK Case Law MCP server does

The BAILII UK Case Law MCP server gives an MCP-compatible AI client access to targeted searches and judgment retrieval from BAILII. It is intended for researching UK case law without downloading an entire collection. Search results include case titles, citations, and links, which can help identify a judgment before retrieving its text.

The server covers the courts exposed by BAILII, including examples such as the UK Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, Upper Tribunal, and Employment Appeal Tribunal. The available court list can be queried rather than assumed, making it useful when narrowing a search to a particular court.

## How it works

The server exposes three MCP tools:

- `bailii_search` performs full-text searches across BAILII courts.
- `bailii_get_judgment` retrieves the text of a selected judgment.
- `bailii_list_courts` returns the available UK court identifiers.

Judgments can be large, commonly around 30–100 KB. To keep normal responses manageable, retrieval defaults to approximately 5,000 characters containing the summary and conclusions. Requests can target detected sections such as `summary`, `conclusions`, `held`, `discussion`, and `background`, or request the complete judgment when the full text is needed.

## Setup and configuration

The BAILII UK Case Law MCP server runs locally and communicates through the local MCP process. Python 3.10 or later is required. The recommended launch method uses `uvx`, which runs the PyPI package without a separate installation:

```bash
uvx bailii-mcp
```

Alternatively, install the package with pip and start it using `bailii-mcp`:

```bash
pip install bailii-mcp
bailii-mcp
```

It can be configured in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or VS Code. Claude Code uses `claude mcp add bailii -- uvx bailii-mcp`; the other clients require an MCP server entry with `uvx` as the command and `bailii-mcp` as its argument. The repository also supports an editable install from source with `pip install -e .`.

## Tools and capabilities

Use `bailii_search` for questions involving legal topics, case names, or phrases found in judgments. Use `bailii_get_judgment` after identifying a result to inspect the court’s reasoning or holding. Section extraction is useful when only the discussion or conclusion matters, while full retrieval is available for broader analysis. `bailii_list_courts` helps discover supported court names and identifiers before filtering research.

## Limitations and notes

BAILII blocks requests from cloud servers and datacenters, so local execution is a functional requirement for this implementation. Requests therefore originate from the user’s machine. BAILII’s terms prohibit bulk downloading; use the BAILII UK Case Law MCP server for targeted research and keep request rates reasonable. Section extraction depends on the formatting of each judgment, so some documents may not contain clearly detectable sections.

_Full upstream README: https://allmcps.com/mcp/bailii-uk-case-law/readme_