BAILII UK Case Law vs Caselaw
A side-by-side look at the BAILII UK Case Law and Caselaw MCP servers: transport, auth, tools, quality signals, and the config to install either one in Claude, Cursor, Windsurf or VS Code.
C
CaselawLegalSearch 197,000+ Pakistani court judgments (1970-2025) and walk their citation graph.50GoodAuth: not declaredVerdict: choose BAILII UK Case Law for legal work as a local process; choose Caselaw for legal. You can also run both side by side in one mcpServers block.
Which MCP server should you choose?
Choose BAILII UK Case Law when
- You need dedicated capabilities in the Legal domain.
- You prefer a local stdio subprocess transport.
- You want tools like
bailii_search, bailii_get_judgment, bailii_list_courts.
CChoose Caselaw when
- You need dedicated capabilities in the Legal domain.
- You want tools like
caselaw_search, caselaw_search_questions, caselaw_lookup_citation.
Feature & specification comparison
Rows where the two servers differ are marked.
| Spec | C Caselaw | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Legal | Legal |
| Quality signal | 48/100 · Fair | 50/100 · Good |
| Install command | Confirmed | Not confirmed yet |
| Transport | Local subprocess (stdio) | — |
| Auth | Not declared | Not declared |
| Pricing | Not declared | Not declared |
| Required env vars | None listed | None listed |
| Verified owner |
Tools & capabilities
BAILII UK Case Law tools 3
bailii_searchFull-text search across all BAILII courts. Returns titles, citations, and links.bailii_get_judgmentRetrieve judgment text. Defaults to summary + conclusions (~5000 chars).bailii_list_courtsList available UK courts (UKSC, EWCA, EWHC, UKUT, EAT, etc).
Caselaw tools 7
caselaw_searchFull-text search of Pakistani judgments (Supreme Court, High Courts, Federal Shariat Court and tribunals, 1970 onward), with optional filters by court, judge, law report and year. Ranking follows how lawyers research: nearness to the legal point decides which cases are returned; among comparably-near cases, more senior court > larger bench > more recent > more cited. For the current state of the law, add year_from (e.g. 2025); use sort='court' for the most authoritative first. With no query, the filters list judgments newest first - e.g. court='Supreme Court' gives the latest Supreme Court judgments, journal='PLD' with year_from=year_to=2024 gives that volume, and sort='recently_added' alone shows what was added to the site most recently. Returns cases with id, title, citation, court, year, outcome and the public URL. For an exact report citation use caselaw_lookup_citation. To read a case, pass its id to caselaw_get_case.caselaw_search_questionsFind judgments by the QUESTION they settle, rather than by words they contain. Every judgment summary on this corpus records the questions that judgment actually decides — e.g. "Does delay in lodging the FIR by itself entitle the accused to bail?" This searches those questions, so it matches the shape a legal problem arrives in rather than the vocabulary a 1987 bench happened to use. COVERAGE IS PARTIAL: only some judgments have a summary with questions yet (the response's `coverage_note` gives the current live ratio, which keeps growing). An empty result means no *summarised* judgment matched — it does NOT mean no such judgment exists. Fall back to caselaw_search, which covers the whole corpus. The questions are prepared from the judgment text. They are a finding aid, not a holding: cite the judgment, never the question. Pass an id to caselaw_get_case to read it.
Ready-to-paste client configs
Paste either block (or both) into your client config, e.g. claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json. We only show a config when the install command is confirmed.
BAILII UK Case Law
{
"mcpServers": {
"bailii-uk-case-law": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"bailii-mcp"
]
}
}
}
Caselaw
No confirmed install command for Caselaw yet — follow the setup steps linked from its listing page rather than a guessed package name.
Frequently asked questions
BAILII UK Case Law is categorized under Legal and uses a local stdio subprocess. Caselaw belongs to Legal and uses an install path we have not confirmed yet. Pick BAILII UK Case Law for legal work and Caselaw for legal.
Copy the mcpServers block from the config section on this page into your client's config (for example claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json), then fully restart the client. Caselaw has no confirmed install command yet — follow its own setup instructions.
BAILII UK Case Law has no declared pricing — check the project's own site. Caselaw has no declared pricing — check the project's own site. If a server needs environment variables such as API keys, define them under the env key in your client's MCP config.
Yes. MCP clients support multiple servers: add bailii-uk-case-law and caselaw as separate keys in the same mcpServers object, and your assistant will call tools from either one.
On AllMCPs, BAILII UK Case Law has a quality signal of 48/100 (Fair) with 1 views, 0 installs and 6 GitHub stars. Caselaw has 50/100 (Good) with 0 views, 0 installs and 0 GitHub stars.