BAILII UK Case Law

io.github.paulieb89Published by GitHub account paulieb89v1.0.1Updated Oct 24, 2026

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

VerifiedSTDIODesktop onlyWeb Search & Scraping

Overview

AI-generated overview

Lets an assistant search UK case law on BAILII and retrieve judgments with automatic section extraction, running locally.

What you can do
Provides three tools: bailii_search for full-text search across all BAILII courts returning titles, citations and links; bailii_get_judgment for retrieving judgment text; and bailii_list_courts for listing available UK courts such as UKSC, EWCA, EWHC, UKUT and EAT. Judgments are large, so retrieval defaults to summary plus conclusions (about 5000 characters), with options to pull a specific section or the full text. Detected sections include summary, conclusions, held, discussion and background.
When to use it
Useful for targeted UK legal research where BAILII coverage matters, such as employment tribunal decisions, older cases not yet in other databases, or specific tribunals with better BAILII indexing. It is intended for targeted research rather than bulk collection.
Requirements
Runs as a local process on the user's machine; desktop only. Requires Python 3.10+ and can be run directly with uvx from PyPI or installed with pip. No authentication, environment variables or headers are declared. Network access to BAILII is needed, and it must run on a residential IP because BAILII blocks cloud and datacenter requests.
Before you install
BAILII terms prohibit bulk downloading, so use it for targeted research only and keep request rates reasonable. Section extraction depends on judgment formatting, so not all judgments have clear section headers. Requests go through the user's own IP address.

Installation

In SourceWeft

  1. Open BAILII UK Case Law in the dashboard and add it to a workspace.
  2. Enable the server for the chats that should use its tools.

Desktop only via STDIO. STDIO servers start a local process, so they need the SourceWeft desktop host.

Other MCP clients

Follow the launch instructions in the repository.

README

BAILII MCP Server

[PyPI] [Install in VS Code]

Search UK case law on BAILII. Retrieve judgments with automatic section extraction (summary, conclusions, discussion, background). Runs locally — BAILII blocks cloud IPs.

Install

Using uv (recommended)

No install needed — uvx runs it directly from PyPI:

bash
uvx bailii-mcp

Using pip

bash
pip install bailii-mcpbailii-mcp

Requires Python 3.10+.

Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

json
{  "mcpServers": {    "bailii": {      "command": "uvx",      "args": ["bailii-mcp"]    }  }}

Claude Code

bash
claude mcp add bailii -- uvx bailii-mcp

VS Code

Add to .vscode/settings.json or use the MCP panel:

json
{  "mcp": {    "servers": {      "bailii": {        "command": "uvx",        "args": ["bailii-mcp"]      }    }  }}

Using pip instead of uvx

If you installed via pip install bailii-mcp, use "command": "bailii-mcp" and "args": [] instead.

From source

bash
git clone https://github.com/paulieb89/bailii-mcp.gitcd bailii-mcppip install -e .

What You Can Ask

Once connected, just ask Claude naturally:

  • "Search BAILII for cases about HMO licensing"
  • "Find recent whistleblowing employment tribunal cases"
  • "Get the summary of Chinn v Hoilund-Carlsen"
  • "What did the court hold in that case?"
  • "Show me the discussion section"

Tools

ToolWhat it does
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).

Section Extraction

Judgments are large (30-100KB). By default, only the summary and conclusions are returned. Ask for more if you need it:

  • Default: summary + conclusions (5000 chars)
  • Specific section: "show me the discussion" → pulls just that section
  • Full text: "get the complete judgment" → returns everything

Sections detected: summary, conclusions, held, discussion, background

Why Local?

BAILII blocks requests from cloud servers and datacenters. This server runs on your machine, so requests go through your residential IP.

For case law that doesn't need BAILII specifically, uk-legal-mcp provides case law via the National Archives API — hosted on Fly.io, no local setup needed.

This BAILII server is useful when you need:

  • Employment tribunal decisions (EAT coverage is stronger on BAILII)
  • Older cases not yet in the TNA database
  • Specific tribunals with better BAILII indexing

Notes

  • BAILII terms prohibit bulk downloading — use for targeted research only
  • Be reasonable with request rate
  • Section extraction depends on judgment formatting — not all judgments have clear section headers

Licence

Apache 2.0

Author

Paul Boucherat — building MCP servers for UK property, legal, and project controls.

Source: README.md at commit b1b9f51

Tools

0
SourceWeft has not started this package in its sandbox yet, so its tools are not known.

Version history

1
  1. v1.0.1LatestSep 16, 2026

Score

40% of the applicable checks met

How complete this listing is, computed from the registry entry, the endpoint and public sources. Not a rating of the server and not a statement that it is safe or working today: reachability is a dated check, and no installs or reviews go into the score.

  • Reached in the last 30 days25 pts

    Keep the endpoint answering the MCP handshake; SourceWeft probes it every 30 days.

  • Auth declared10 pts

    Declare the credential headers in the registry entry, or keep the endpoint answering the probe so its auth can be classified.

  • Tools listed15 pts

    Answer tools/list without a credential, or ship a package that starts in a sandbox without one.

  • DescriptionRequired15 pts
  • Logo10 pts
  • Documentation15 pts
  • License10 pts

    Declare a license in the repository or the registry entry.