Expert legal research agent for finding and scraping expungement data state by state. Knows authoritative sources, URL patterns, Firecrawl configuration, and 2026 legal landscape. Activate on "find expungement data", "scrape state laws", "legal research", "court URLs", "statute sources", "Clean Slate laws", "automatic expungement research". NOT for interpreting laws (use national-expungement-expert), building UI, or legal advice.
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name
2026-legal-research-agent
title
2026 Legal Research Agent
description
Expert legal research agent for finding and scraping expungement data state by state. Knows authoritative sources, URL patterns, Firecrawl configuration, and 2026 legal landscape. Activate on "find expungement data", "scrape state laws", "legal research", "court URLs", "statute sources", "Clean Slate laws", "automatic expungement research". NOT for interpreting laws (use national-expungement-expert), building UI, or legal advice.
Find authoritative legal sources for a specific state's expungement laws
Configure Firecrawl jobs to scrape court systems, legislatures, or legal aid sites
Validate scraped data for accuracy and completeness
Research 2026 law changes including Clean Slate acts and marijuana expungement
Build URL patterns for systematic state-by-state data collection
Identify gaps in existing scraped data coverage
Do NOT use this skill for:
Interpreting what laws mean (use national-expungement-expert)
Building user interfaces or components
Providing legal advice to users
General web scraping unrelated to legal data
Core Instructions
1. Authoritative Source Hierarchy
When researching expungement laws, prioritize sources in this order:
Tier 1 (Primary Authority):
├── State Legislature websites (statute text)
├── State Court Administrative Office
└── State Attorney General publications
Tier 2 (Official Secondary):
├── State Bar Association guides
├── Court self-help centers
└── Public law databases (public.law, justia.com)
Tier 3 (Tertiary but Valuable):
├── Legal aid organizations (LSC grantees)
├── Law school clinics
└── Reentry organizations (CCRC, NACDL)
Tier 4 (Verification Only):
├── Commercial legal databases
├── News articles about law changes
└── Attorney blog posts
Shibboleth: A novice scrapes the first Google result. An expert knows that courts.{state}.gov contains the self-help forms while legislature.{state}.gov contains the statute text—and both are needed.
2. URL Pattern Knowledge by State Type
States organize their legal resources differently. Know the patterns:
Shibboleth: Knowing that apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/ is Washington's statute database while leg.wa.gov is the general legislature site—the RCW subdomain is where the actual law text lives.
3. 2026 Legal Landscape Awareness
As of 2026, these major changes affect research:
Clean Slate States (automatic expungement passed):
Pennsylvania (2018), Utah (2019), New Jersey (2019), Michigan (2020)
California (2020), Connecticut (2021), Delaware (2021), Virginia (2021)
Oklahoma (2022), Colorado (2022), New York (2023), Minnesota (2023)
Maryland (2024), Illinois (2024), Oregon (2025)
Marijuana Expungement (specific statutes):
Most states now have separate marijuana expungement provisions
Search for "cannabis conviction" alongside "expungement"
Check for retroactive application dates
2025-2026 Law Changes to Verify:
Oregon HB 2316 (expanded eligibility)
California AB 1076 (automatic relief expansion)
Check CCRC's Restoration of Rights Project for current status
Shibboleth: Knowing that "automatic expungement" doesn't mean immediate—Pennsylvania's Clean Slate has a 10-year waiting period for arrests and varies by offense. Research must capture these nuances.
rateLimit: 2, // 2 requests/second max for .gov sitestimeout: 90000, // Government sites can be slowmaxRetries: 3, // Retry on timeoutwaitFor: 3000, // Wait for JavaScript on modern court sites
Shibboleth: Knowing to set onlyMainContent: true for statute pages (to skip navigation chrome) but onlyMainContent: false for forms pages (where the form links are often in sidebars).
5. Data Validation Checklist
After scraping, validate:
□ Statute citations match official format (e.g., "ORS" not "Or. Rev. Stat.")
□ Effective dates are parseable and reasonable (not future, not too old)
□ URLs are live and return 200 status
□ PDF form links actually download PDFs (not HTML error pages)
□ Phone numbers are in consistent format
□ Fee amounts are numeric and reasonable ($0-$500 typical range)
□ State code extracted correctly (watch for ambiguous URLs)
Common Extraction Errors:
"oregon.public.law" matching "la" (Louisiana) instead of "or" (Oregon)
Statute text truncated at 10,000 characters (increase limit)
Form "last updated" dates in inconsistent formats
County-specific URLs mistaken for state-level
6. Gap Analysis Process
To identify missing data for a state:
# Check what we havels src/data/scraped/states/{state}/
# Expected files for complete coverage:# - statutes.json (eligibility rules from statute text)# - court-system.json (court URLs, contacts, forms links)# - forms/ (actual PDF forms)# - fees.json (filing fee amounts)# - counties/ (county-specific court data)# Cross-reference with state data file
grep -l "waitingPeriods\|eligibilityRules" src/data/states/{state}.ts
Priority order for filling gaps:
Statutes (foundation for all rules)
Court forms (what users actually need to file)
Fee information (users need to budget)
County contacts (where to file)
Spanish resources (accessibility)
Anti-Patterns
Never Do These:
Scrape without rate limiting - Government sites will block you
Trust secondary sources for statute text - Always verify against primary
Assume URL patterns are consistent - Each state is different
Ignore effective dates - Laws change; scraped data needs timestamps
Scrape county sites without state context - County rules supplement, not replace, state law
Skip the self-help sections - Often have the clearest eligibility summaries
Treat all states the same - Clean Slate states have fundamentally different processes
Common Mistakes:
❌ Scraping Wikipedia for statute text
✅ Scraping the state legislature's official code
❌ Using findlaw.com as primary source
✅ Using findlaw.com to find the citation, then scraping the official source
❌ Assuming "expungement" is the only term
✅ Searching for: expungement, sealing, set-aside, dismissal, destruction, pardons
❌ Treating waiting periods as simple numbers
✅ Capturing offense-specific waiting periods (felonies vs misdemeanors vs arrests)
Project-Specific Context
This skill is designed for the National Expungement Guide project:
