The web edition — The Counsel

The browser face of AI Legal UK is The Counsel — a legal assistant rendered as an editorial broadsheet rather than a SaaS dashboard. No command line needed. Open it in your browser, drop in a document, and watch the panel work clause by clause via SSE streaming. It looks like a premium legal title; it is completely free and open source.

What you'll see

• A warm-cream broadsheet — masthead, marginalia, drop-caps and Roman-numeral cells
• Six primary navigation entries: Chambers · Review · Generate · Caselaw · Library · Docs
• Drop a PDF, DOCX or paste text on /review; SSE streaming as the panel reasons
• A score gauge with the Contract Safety Score (0–100) and per-clause risk pills
• Marginalia from the Senior Counsel persona suggesting replacement language
• One-click PDF export of any completed review for your records

Under the hood

The Counsel is a Next.js 14 App Router application. The editorial design system lives in dashboard/components/counsel/ and is shared by every page. It runs locally on your machine and supports two operating modes.

Design language

Token	Value	Notes
Paper	#f5f0e6	Warm cream — the page itself
Ink	#1a1410	Headlines and body type
Accent	#8b1f1f	Oxblood — used for italic display, drop-caps, risk underlines
Display / serif	Source Serif 4	Italic for titles, drop-caps and the wordmark
Mono	IBM Plex Mono	Editorial kickers and masthead vol. lines
Sans	IBM Plex Sans	Buttons and small UI chrome

Two Modes

Mode	API Key Required	Data Source	Cost
Demo	No	Pre-loaded fixture data	Free
Live	Yes (Anthropic or OpenAI for review analysis)	Real provider-backed analysis via SSE streaming	Per-token

Switch between modes using the toggle in the page header.

Pages

The editorial nav is six entries; everything else is auxiliary.

Section	Path	Purpose
Chambers	/chambers	Home of active matters — recent activity, draft reviews, queued instruments
Review	/review	Drop a PDF / DOCX / paste text. SSE streaming as the panel works clause by clause
Generate	/generate	Draft NDAs, terms, privacy policies, agreements, board packs from facts
Caselaw	/caselaw	Judgment search via the Lex Graph; opens at /judgment
Library	/skills	Full register of 38 skills across 10 editorial categories
Docs	/docs	Quickstarts, concepts, reference, architecture, and contribution guides
Matter detail	/matter/[id]	Per-matter workspace — playbooks, document set, panel verdicts
Compare	/compare	Side-by-side contract diff with change highlighting
Legislation	/legislation	Browse and search statute via legislation.gov.uk
History	/history	Local-storage review history with per-filter empty states
Pricing	/pricing	Plans, what's included, and the always-free open-source build
Onboarding	/onboarding	First-run walk-through for demo vs. live
Settings	/settings	API key, mode, self-host link
The Panel	/counsel/agents	All twelve agents and their orchestration weights

Key features

• SSE streaming for real-time analysis progress in live mode
• PDF export from review detail and compare pages via the browser print dialog
• Client-side persistence — reviews and settings stored in browser localStorage
• Statute linking — citations are auto-linked to legislation.gov.uk inline
• Demo / live mode indicator in the masthead so a sample is never confused with a live opinion

API Key Handling

Your Key Never Leaves Your Browser Unnecessarily

The dashboard server does not hold or persist any API key. The browser stores your provider key in localStorage under the key ai-legal-uk-api-key. Each request sends the key in the request body to the dashboard's own API route, which passes it directly to the selected provider adapter. The server never logs, stores, or forwards the key anywhere else.

Quick Start — hosted

The hosted edition is at the-counsel.co.uk. Sign up with email or Google, complete the brief onboarding, and you land in your Chambers with a personalised welcome and quick-instrument tiles.

Quick Start — local

cd dashboard
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. The dashboard starts in Demo mode by default — no API key needed to explore every feature. Authenticated routes (/chambers, /matter/*, /history, /settings, /onboarding) require Clerk env vars; without them the auth-gated pages will simply redirect to /sign-in.

For a fresh production deployment to your own domain (Vercel + Clerk + Neon + R2 + Resend), see the deployment guide.

Tech stack

• Framework: Next.js 14 (App Router)
• Design system: components/counsel/ — editorial broadsheet primitives (masthead, nav, marginalia, score gauges, risk pills)
• Typography: Source Serif 4 + IBM Plex Mono + IBM Plex Sans
• AI: provider adapters in lib/model-providers/ (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenAI Codex CLI)
• Document parsing: TXT, DOCX, PDF text extraction with optional OCR fallback (OpenAI / Firecrawl)
• Auth: Clerk (@clerk/nextjs) for sign-up, sign-in, and the production session token. Email/password + Google OAuth.
• Database: Neon Postgres via Drizzle ORM. Tables: users, matters, reviews, documents. Schema in lib/db/schema.ts.
• Storage: Cloudflare R2 for document uploads and cached audio briefings via presigned URLs.
• Email: Resend for the welcome dispatch (triggered by Clerk's user.created webhook at /api/webhooks/clerk).
• Local-only state: the original demo flow still uses browser localStorage for unauthenticated users — review history, API keys, and mode toggle. Authenticated users see a server-backed view.