DOCUMENTATION

The demand side of legal work, documented.

api.lawyer is the demand-side substrate: Tenants and Mints open Matters, a deterministic agent works the open stages, and every act the Reserved-Act Catalog names lands on a Signer via gigs.lawyer. These pages document the whole loop.

Quickstart

Reads are keyless from your first call, and the sandbox provisions without a key, an email or an approval. Four calls take you from discovery to a reserved act.

Discover every door.The capability card names the HTTP routes, the MCP command and the access-tier ladder.
keyless read
```
$ curl https://api.lawyer/.well-known/agents.json
```
Provision a sandbox.201 with a TTL-bound workspace on synthetic seed state. Every envelope is marked simulated.
no key, no email, no approval
```
$ curl -X POST https://api.lawyer/workspaces
```

Place an order and watch it stop.The agent runs every open stage, then the Matter waits on a Signer for the reserved act.

answers status: waiting_on_signer

$ curl -X POST https://api.lawyer/workspaces/{id}/orders \    -H 'content-type: application/json' \    -d '{"mint":"you","offer":"provisional-draft-and-file","title":"[sandbox] draft","inventor":"Synthetic Inventor One (sandbox)","listFeeUsd":199}'

Hand it to your agent.The same loop as MCP tools over stdio, from the published package.
MCP server
```
$ npx -y api.lawyer mcp serve
```

Where to next

ReferenceEvery route, from one manifestMethods, paths and JSON examples for Matters, Orders, the Deadline Ladder and the sandbox grains. MCPTools for the agent that buysThe stdio server and its tools. They stop exactly where the API stops. Humans in the loopWhere the Catalog says humanHow a reserved act becomes a Gig, and what comes back on the seam. SandboxWatch a Matter flowThe guided walk runs the real calls from your browser, keyless and synthetic.

Concepts

Propose → gate → commit

Workersagent proposes

The GateGate checks

The journaljournal commits

Tenant Guardrails bind mechanicsClient Mandates bind the merits

Workers — the agent and the Signer alike — are judgment-only: they propose. The Gate alone commits, and its authority is bounded twice. Tenant Guardrails bind mechanics only (fee caps, jurisdiction allowlists); Client Mandates alone bind the merits. And two answers are sovereign against the Gate itself: a Declination is final until the Client speaks, and a journaled Client direction cannot be blocked on Tenant-sourced grounds.

Matter and Asset

intakeprepareexaminereviewsignfile

open stages: the agentreserved acts: a Signer, under their own license

The Matter is one Client’s one legal objective, advanced through six Stage Verbs — intake, prepare, examine, review, sign, file — to one of four forever-terminals. The Asset is the perpetual noun the Matter acts on: it keeps the docket, an insert-only status history, the Deadline Ladder, and a lineage of every Matter that ever touched it. Matters terminate; Assets accumulate.

Two membranes

Everything on this surface is sorted by two lines.

Authority

The authority membrane: acts in the Reserved-Act Catalog — sign, file, and advice-class utterances — are performed only by a Signer under their own license; no model quality crosses that line.

Money

The money membrane: the two-rail Settlement decides who invoices what — on the patent rail the platform is provider and pays the flat Legal Fee to the Signer; on the state rail the Signer is merchant of record for the Legal Fee and the platform invoices only its Product Fee. The Legal Fee is never split, never shared, never scaled.

The two-rail Settlement

patent rail

Sperry-sheltered USPTO patent practice. The platform is provider and merchant of record: it charges the Customer a flat Product Fee and pays the Signer the flat per-act Legal Fee. The Meter releases only on the USPTO receipt — no filing, no charge.

state rail

All attorney-only work. The Signer is merchant of record for the Legal Fee, charged directly to the Client and recorded here — structurally never platform revenue. The platform separately invoices its flat Product Fee.

perActInsuranceUsdThe per-act Umbrella E&O line, a named platform cost on every attested reserved act — on both rails.

In-memory stores, deterministic clock, no live filings. Nothing here is legal advice.