| name | compare-across-jurisdictions |
| description | Compare how a legal question is treated across several jurisdictions in one structured table, showing where regimes converge, where they diverge, and what that means for an entity operating across them. Use for multi-market compliance, expansion, and cross-border structuring questions. |
Compare Across Jurisdictions
Answer the same legal question in several jurisdictions and show what the differences actually mean.
The value is in the comparison being genuinely like-for-like, which is also the hardest part.
1. Fix the question and the jurisdictions
Agree the precise legal question and the exact list of jurisdictions. Confirm what the comparison is
for — market entry, a compliance program, structuring, or a policy decision — because it decides
which dimensions matter.
Ask whether the user needs the position as it stands today, or as it will stand once instruments
already adopted become applicable. Those produce different tables.
2. Research each jurisdiction on its own terms
Research each jurisdiction separately and completely before comparing. The failure mode here is
reading the first jurisdiction thoroughly and then looking only for its features in the others,
which quietly imports one regime's structure onto another that does not share it.
Use the local primary law, and local secondary sources to check your reading. Where a concept exists
in one regime and simply has no counterpart in another, say that rather than forcing an equivalent.
Keep client and party details out of search queries throughout.
3. Normalise before tabulating
Make sure each column means the same thing across rows. Thresholds measured differently, obligations
falling on differently-defined actors, penalties expressed as caps versus percentages, and dates
meaning "in force" versus "applicable from" all produce tables that look comparable and are not.
Where a difference cannot be normalised, keep it visible in the table rather than flattening it into
a tidy cell.
4. Build the comparison
One row per jurisdiction, with columns chosen for the decision — typically applicable law, key
provisions, scope and thresholds, obligations, enforcement and penalties, and current status.
Then write the part that makes it useful: where the regimes converge, where they genuinely diverge,
and what an entity operating across all of them has to do in practice. Where a single policy must
satisfy every regime at once, the strictest position on each dimension is one possible baseline.
Offer it as that rather than as the legal answer, keep jurisdiction-specific exceptions visible, and
report an irreconcilable conflict as a conflict rather than resolving it by picking the stricter
rule.
5. Verify every cell
Each entry is a citation. Confirm the provision exists, says what the cell claims, is current, and
belongs to the jurisdiction it sits under. Cross-jurisdictional work is where misattribution is both
most likely and most damaging. Flag any cell that could not be verified rather than leaving it to
look as solid as the rest.
6. Deliver and continue
Lead with the practical implication, then the table, then the caveats.
Use strawberry/legal/research-a-legal-question when one jurisdiction turns out to need real depth,
and strawberry/legal/brief-a-regulation when a single instrument deserves its own briefing.
Preserve the accepted jurisdictions, dimensions, and sources as a custom skill when the user
compares the same regimes repeatedly.
