BetterCallClaude

Swiss Legal Intelligence Plugin for Cowork and Claude Code

BetterCallClaude is a plugin for legal professionals working in Cowork or Claude Code. It transforms legal research, case strategy, and document drafting for Swiss lawyers by providing deep integration with Swiss legal databases, multi-lingual analysis across German, French, Italian, and English, and built-in privacy protection for attorney-client privilege.

The plugin covers the full spectrum of Swiss legal work: BGE/ATF/DTF precedent research, case strategy development with risk assessment, adversarial legal analysis, compliance and data protection advisory, fiscal and corporate law expertise, real estate law, legal drafting with jurisdiction-aware templates, legal translation, and citation verification across all 26 Swiss cantons. Privacy compliance with Anwaltsgeheimnis (Art. 321 StGB) is enforced automatically through a pre-tool-use hook that detects privileged content before it leaves the local environment.

Version: 4.9.0 -- 20 agents, 26 commands, 13 skills, 9 MCP servers.

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Installation

BetterCallClaude can be installed through several channels.

Claude Cowork (Recommended)

Visit the installation page at bettercallclaude.ai/desktop for guided setup instructions. The page walks you through installing the plugin directly in Claude Cowork with a few clicks.

From GitHub (Claude Code CLI)

Install the plugin directly from GitHub:

claude plugin add fedec65/bettercallclaude

Windows Installation (Claude Code CLI)

Claude Code on Windows requires Git for Windows. Install it first, then install Claude Code using one of these methods:

PowerShell:

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

CMD:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd && del install.cmd

WinGet:

winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode

After installation, install the plugin:

claude plugin add fedec65/bettercallclaude

You can launch claude from PowerShell, CMD, or Git Bash. You do not need to run PowerShell as Administrator.

WSL users: Both WSL 1 and WSL 2 are supported. Use curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash inside your WSL terminal, then install the plugin as above.

Git Bash not found? If Claude Code cannot locate your Git Bash installation, add this to your settings.json:

{ "env": { "CLAUDE_CODE_GIT_BASH_PATH": "C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe" } }

Manual Installation (Claude Code CLI)

Clone the repository and point Claude Code to the plugin directory:

git clone https://github.com/fedec65/bettercallclaude.git
cd bettercallclaude
claude --plugin-dir bettercallclaude/

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Available Commands

Usage examples

/bettercallclaude:legal I need to assess our exposure under Art. 97 OR for late delivery

/bettercallclaude:research Art. 97 OR contractual liability for late delivery

/bettercallclaude:strategy Commercial lease dispute in Zurich, landlord claims CHF 200k damages

/bettercallclaude:draft Employment contract for a software engineer in Geneva, bilingual DE/FR

/bettercallclaude:adversarial Is the non-compete clause in this employment contract enforceable?

/bettercallclaude:workflow litigation-prep Personal injury claim against manufacturer

/bettercallclaude:translate DE->FR Klageschrift for Geneva commercial court

/bettercallclaude:precedent Art. 2 ZGB good faith principle evolution since 2015

/bettercallclaude:doc-analyze @contract.pdf Review this commercial lease agreement

/bettercallclaude:cantonal ZH Commercial court jurisdiction for contract disputes over CHF 30k

/bettercallclaude:briefing Prepare full litigation for Art. 97 OR breach, CHF 500K, Zurich

/bettercallclaude:briefing --resume brief_20260225_contract

/bettercallclaude:legal --skip-briefing Quick BGE search for Art. 41 OR

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Skills

Skills are activated automatically when Claude detects relevant legal context in your conversation. You do not need to invoke them manually.

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Agents

The plugin includes 18 specialized subagents that handle complex multi-step legal workflows.

Core Agents

Domain Specialist Agents

Briefing and Orchestration Agents

Adversarial Analysis Workflow

The adversarial analysis workflow uses three agents in sequence to provide balanced legal assessment:

1. Advocate builds the strongest case for the position, identifying supporting precedents, statutory provisions, and doctrinal authority.
2. Adversary challenges the position systematically, finding counter-precedents, doctrinal criticism, factual weaknesses, and procedural obstacles.
3. Judicial Analyst synthesizes both positions using Swiss Erwagung methodology, assigning probability scores to each legal issue and recommending a course of action.

Invoke with /bettercallclaude:adversarial followed by the legal question.

Multi-Agent Workflows

The workflow orchestrator supports predefined pipelines:

Invoke with /bettercallclaude:workflow followed by the workflow name and case description.

Briefing Session (New in v3.1.0)

Complex legal matters often involve multiple domains, jurisdictions, and competing considerations that a single query cannot fully capture. BetterCallClaude previously used a one-shot classification: the /legal gateway would read your query, score its complexity, and immediately route to agents. This worked well for focused questions but led to misrouted or incomplete analysis when the initial query lacked critical context.

The briefing session adds a collaborative intake phase between your query and agent execution. Instead of guessing what you need, the system assembles a panel of specialist agents, asks you targeted questions, and builds a precise execution plan before any work begins.

How it works:

1. Adaptive activation -- The /legal gateway scores your query's complexity (1-10). Simple queries (1-3) route directly as before. Moderate queries (4-6) trigger 2-3 inline clarifying questions. Complex queries (7-10) enter a full briefing session with a specialist panel.

2. Specialist panel -- For complex queries, the briefing coordinator selects 2-5 agents from a pool of 10 specialists (researcher, strategist, procedure, risk, compliance, drafter, corporate, fiscal, real estate, cantonal). Each panelist is spawned as a real subagent and returns domain-specific questions based on your query.

3. Transparent attribution -- Every question is labeled with which specialist needs the answer and why. You see exactly who is asking (e.g., "Needed by: ⏱️ Procedure (deadline calculation), 📊 Risk (exposure estimate)").

4. Structured execution plan -- After 1-3 rounds of questions, the system builds a step-by-step execution plan showing which agents will run, in what order, with what dependencies, and where checkpoints will pause for your review.

5. Interactive refinement -- You can modify the plan before approving it: add or remove agents, adjust the order, change checkpoint placement, or ask why a particular specialist was included.

6. Checkpoint execution -- Once approved, the orchestrator executes the plan stage by stage, pausing at each checkpoint for you to review results, adjust the remaining plan, or save progress for later.

7. Cross-session persistence -- Briefing state is saved to memory after each interaction. You can close the conversation and resume later with /bettercallclaude:briefing --resume. All your answers, the execution plan, and any completed stages are preserved.

Benefits:

• Fewer misrouted queries -- The panel catches missing context before agents start working, reducing wasted cycles and incorrect analysis.
• Precise execution plans -- Instead of a generic pipeline, you get a tailored plan with the right agents in the right order for your specific matter.
• User control -- You see and approve the plan before execution. No surprise agent spawning or unexpected output.
• Efficient for simple cases -- Simple queries bypass the briefing entirely. The system only activates when complexity warrants it.
• Resumable workflows -- Long-running matters can be paused at any checkpoint and resumed across sessions without losing progress.

Flags:

Usage examples:

# Complex matter -- triggers full briefing automatically via /legal gateway
/bettercallclaude:legal Prepare litigation for Art. 97 OR breach, CHF 500K claim,
  Zurich Commercial Court, employer is a regulated financial institution

# Explicit briefing -- forces briefing even for simpler queries
/bettercallclaude:briefing Is Art. 340 OR non-compete enforceable for a 2-year period?

# Deep briefing -- maximum panel size and question rounds
/bettercallclaude:briefing --depth deep Cross-border M&A with tax structuring,
  target in ZH, buyer in GE, FINMA-regulated entities on both sides

# Quick briefing -- lightweight intake, 2-3 questions, no panel
/bettercallclaude:briefing --depth quick Review my commercial lease for compliance

# Resume a saved briefing from a previous session
/bettercallclaude:briefing --resume brief_20260225_litigation

# List all saved briefing sessions
/bettercallclaude:briefing --list

# Skip briefing -- bypass intake and route directly to agents
/bettercallclaude:legal --skip-briefing Search BGE for Art. 41 OR tort liability

# Force briefing on a query that would normally route directly
/bettercallclaude:legal --briefing Find BGE on Art. 97 OR foreseeability

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Language Support

BetterCallClaude supports all four Swiss national languages plus English for legal analysis:

Language detection is automatic. When you write in German, the plugin responds with German legal terminology and citation formats (BGE, Art., Abs., E.). When you write in French, it switches to ATF, art., al., and consid. formats. You can also request a specific language explicitly.

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Jurisdictions

Federal Law

Federal law is the default jurisdiction when no canton is specified. The plugin covers all major federal codes:

• BV / Cst. / Cost. (Federal Constitution)
• ZGB / CC (Civil Code)
• OR / CO (Code of Obligations)
• StGB / CP (Criminal Code)
• ZPO / CPC (Civil Procedure)
• StPO / CPP (Criminal Procedure)
• SchKG / LP (Debt Collection and Bankruptcy)
• UWG / LCD (Unfair Competition Act)
• DSG / LPD (Data Protection Act)
• DBG / LIFD (Federal Direct Tax Act)
• StHG / LHID (Tax Harmonization Act)
• MWSTG / LTVA (Value Added Tax Act)
• GwG / LBA (Anti-Money Laundering Act)
• FIDLEG / LSFin (Financial Services Act)
• FINIG / LEFin (Financial Institutions Act)
• BankG / LB (Banking Act)

Cantonal Law

All 26 Swiss cantons are fully configured with court system details, citation formats, and MCP search capability via entscheidsuche.ch:

Jurisdiction routing is automatic. Mentioning a canton code, canton name, or cantonal court triggers the appropriate cantonal law mode. Cross-cantonal issues default to federal law analysis.

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MCP Servers

The plugin includes five pre-compiled MCP servers that provide direct integration with Swiss legal databases. See CONNECTORS.md for detailed API documentation.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 20 (only required for local Ollama invocation; the other eight MCP servers are reached over HTTPS / SSE and run no code on your machine).

Eight of the nine MCP servers are hosted remotely (seven HTTP servers at mcp.bettercallclaude.ch, one SSE server at mcp.opencaselaw.ch) and are reached by Cowork Desktop without any local build step. Only the local ollama server runs from a committed compiled bundle at bettercallclaude/mcp-servers/ollama/dist/index.js; to use it you need a running Ollama daemon (default http://localhost:11434, overridable via the ollama_host userConfig key).

All server paths and URLs are configured in .mcp.json using the ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} and ${user_config.*} interpolations for portability and self-hosting (see docs/PRIVACY.md).

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Privacy Protection

BetterCallClaude includes built-in Anwaltsgeheimnis (attorney-client privilege) compliance.

A PreToolUse hook monitors outgoing tool calls for patterns that indicate privileged content. The hook scans for privilege indicators in German (Anwaltsgeheimnis, Mandantengeheimnis, vertraulich), French (secret professionnel, confidentiel, privilegie), and Italian (segreto professionale, confidenziale, privilegio).

When privileged content is detected, the hook returns an ask decision that prompts the user for confirmation before the tool call proceeds. This prevents accidental disclosure of attorney-client privileged material through external API calls.

The privacy system supports three modes:

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Requirements

• Cowork or Claude Code (latest version)
• Node.js >= 18 (for MCP servers)

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Author

Federico Cesconi

GitHub: fedec65/bettercallclaude

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License

AGPL-3.0 -- See LICENSE for full terms.

Built with love for the Swiss legal community. Support the project ☕

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For Developers

Plugin resources (agents, commands, skills, hooks, .mcp.json) live in this repo. MCP server source code lives in the separate fedec65/BetterCallClaudeMCP repo; the HTTP aggregator there is deployed to Railway at mcp.bettercallclaude.ch, and this plugin's .mcp.json points at those remote URLs.

# Build the distributable plugin zip
npm run package

Repository Structure (this repo)

.claude-plugin/plugin.json   Plugin manifest
.mcp.json                    MCP server configuration (remote URLs + local ollama)
agents/                      Agent definitions (markdown)
commands/                    Slash commands (markdown)
skills/                      Auto-activated skills (markdown)
hooks/                       Privacy detection hook
mcp-servers/ollama/          Bundled local STDIO MCP server (dist/ checked in)
scripts/                     Privacy hook runtime scripts

The ollama STDIO bundle in mcp-servers/ollama/dist/ is checked into git so end users don't need Node.js build tooling. To change the remote MCP servers (BGE search, entscheidsuche, fedlex-sparql, legal-citations, onlinekommentar, legal-persona, tas-jurisprudence), open a PR in fedec65/BetterCallClaudeMCP.

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Professional Disclaimer

BetterCallClaude is a legal research and analysis tool. All outputs produced by this plugin:

• Require professional lawyer review and validation before use.
• Do not constitute legal advice.
• May contain errors, omissions, or outdated information.
• Must be verified against official sources (admin.ch, court databases, official gazettes).
• Must be adapted to the specific circumstances of each case.

Lawyers maintain full professional responsibility for all legal work products. This tool assists legal professionals but does not replace professional judgment, independent verification, or the duty of care owed to clients.