api.lawyer
Early access

AGENT-FIRST · LEGAL DOMAIN · AXP-CONFORMANT

The legal domain, as an API your agent can call.

746 capabilities across data, services, and commerce. Your agent reads the facts, runs the workflow, and — where the law reserves an act to a human — we route a live credential-holder to sign. One API. No sales call.

A live credential-holder at every reserved act.
Get early accesscurl your first call

1,273 upstreams · keyless first value · MCP-native · humans at every reserved leaf

api.lawyer/v1202 ACCEPTED

POST /patent/file-utility

{
  "status": "PENDING_SIGNER",
  "effect": "act",
  "gate": { "requiresSigner": "uspto-registration" },
  "signer": { "routed": true, "liveness": "FRESH" },
  "eta": "PT24H"
}
EFFECTactGATEsignerWEBHOOKoutcome.filed
746
capabilities in the catalog
1,273
upstream sources wired
90–98%
of the graph your agent runs

Catalog counts from the current draft, as of 2026-07-21. Targets, not live-service claims.

Three tiers. Two lines your agent can’t cross alone.

Every capability is classified by its effect — read, record, or act — and gated exactly where the law gates it. Nothing is vaguely "premium." Access is a function of authority, not a sales tier.

dataread

Dockets, registers, statutes, file-wrappers, chain-of-title. Below the authority membrane: reading a fact is unreserved no matter how much AI does it. Keyless first value.

gate: none
servicesrecord

Drafting, assembly, analysis, monitoring. Orchestration above data, below the money line. Agent-native end to end — assembly survives UPL because it selects mechanically and never tells your user what’s right for their matter.

scoped grants
commerceact

Money moves or an instrument executes. Some acts are unreserved (a fee payment, a provisional filing). Some are reserved — and there, a live credential-holder signs.

Mandate + requiresSigner

Two gates, symmetric across the membrane: requiresAccess — a restricted upstream your principal may only consume with a live credential (PACER, FinCEN BOI, private PAIR). requiresSigner — a reserved act only a live credential-holder may perform. Both verified at call time by id.org.ai.

The patent vertical, end to end.

One vertical, fully wired — from prior-art search to a signed utility filing. Everything below the reserved leaf is agent-native.

data — readgate: none · keyless
GET/patent/search?q=prior-art & citation hitsgate: none
GET/patent/{number}biblio + claims + spec + drawingsgate: none
GET/patent/{number}/familyINPADOC family & legal statusgate: none
GET/patent/{number}/statusprosecution history / file-wrappergate: none
GET/patent/{number}/assignmentchain-of-title (reel/frame)gate: none
GET/patent/{number}/citationsforward/backward citationsgate: none
GET/patent/{number}/ptabPTAB trial historygate: none
GET/patent/{number}/maintenancefee windows / abandonment cliffgate: none
services — recordagent-native
POST/patent/prior-art-reportsearch → ranked, cited reportgate: none
POST/patent/draft-claimsadversarial §101/102/103/112 examiner panelgate: none
POST/patent/draft-specfull specification from claims + disclosuregate: none
POST/patent/oa-responseoffice-action response draftgate: none
POST/patent/idsinformation disclosure statementgate: none
POST/patent/docket-watchprosecution event monitoringrequiresAccess: patent-center-practitioner
commerce — actmoney moves · instrument executes
POST/patent/pay-maintenancemoney movesgate: none
POST/patent/file-provisionalpro-se-fileablegate: none
POST/patent/file-utilitythe reserved leafrequiresSigner: uspto-registration ←
POST/patent/record-assignmentinstrument executesrequiresSigner: uspto-registration

Drafting isn’t reserved — an inventor may file pro se, so the entire drafting graph is gate: none. The one reserved leaf is the utility filing signature. That’s the whole shape of the domain: your agent does 90–98% of the graph; a credential-holder does the irreducible reserved percent.

Trademark, litigation, corporate, tax, immigration clone this shape. Browse the catalog → (746 capabilities)

Where the law says “a human must sign,” we ship the human.

No model quality crosses the authority membrane. An agent cannot sign an opinion of counsel, appear in court, prosecute before the USPTO, or notarize a deed — definitionally, not technically. api.lawyer treats these reserved leaves as first-class API primitives: your agent stages everything up to the leaf, the call blocks on requiresSigner, a live credential-holder reviews, signs, and files, and your agent receives back the signed artifact plus a verifiable attestation and receipt.

  1. 01Your agent calls POST /patent/file-utility with the finished draft.Everything up to the signature is already staged — claims, spec, IDS, fees.
  2. 02id.org.ai verifies the routed signer holds a live uspto-registration.Checked fresh against the USPTO OED roster at filing. Suspended means BLOCKED, not degraded.
  3. 03The practitioner reviews, signs, and files under their own registration.You get the USPTO receipt and a signed Attestation.

The signers come from gigs.lawyer — our credentialed supply network: bar attorneys, patent practitioners, RON notaries, CPAs, signing at marginal rates under a platform umbrella E&O policy. That network is the moat. The drafting is commoditized; the routed human is not.

Two calls: one free fact, one reserved act.

curl · data tier · keyless
$ curl https://api.lawyer/patent/US11123456B2/status

{
  "number": "US11123456B2",
  "title": "Distributed ledger for credential attestation",
  "status": "granted",
  "prosecution": {
    "artUnit": "3685",
    "examiner": "K. Tran",
    "events": [
      { "date": "2023-04-11", "code": "CTNF", "desc": "Non-final rejection" },
      { "date": "2023-09-02", "code": "A...", "desc": "Response after non-final" },
      { "date": "2024-01-17", "code": "NOA",  "desc": "Notice of allowance" }
    ]
  },
  "maintenance": { "nextWindow": "2027-07-17", "surchargeAfter": "2028-01-17" },
  "meta": { "gate": "none", "effect": "read", "metered": false }
}
MCP tool call · commerce tier · reserved leaf
// tool call
{
  "name": "patent_file_utility",
  "arguments": {
    "draft": { "claims": "…", "spec": "…", "ids": ["US10998877B1", "EP3456789A1"] },
    "applicant": { "name": "Acme Robotics, Inc.", "entityStatus": "small" },
    "mandate": "mnd_9f2ka7"
  }
}

// response
{
  "status": "PENDING_SIGNER",
  "effect": "act",
  "gate": { "requiresSigner": "uspto-registration" },
  "signer": {
    "routed": true,
    "credential": "uspto-registration",
    "verification": { "mode": "registry:USPTO-OED", "liveness": "FRESH" }
  },
  "eta": "PT24H",
  "then": {
    "attestation": "att_…  (authority: PatentAttorney)",
    "receipt": "USPTO e-filing acknowledgment",
    "webhook": "outcome.filed"
  }
}

Same API, both sides of the membrane. Reads return instantly and keyless. Reserved acts return a typed PENDING_SIGNER block, route to a verified credential-holder, and resolve to a signed artifact via webhook. Typed BLOCKED and EMPTY — never a silent failure.

Three ways agents consume the surface.

B2AYour agent, directly.

Research, docketing, compliance, monitoring. Everything up to — never through — a reserved act.

B2H2AYour agent, plus our signer.

The agent drafts and stages; a routed credential-holder performs the reserved leaf and returns the signed artifact.

B2A2DYour product, our infrastructure.

Embed the capability into your own product — a tax line in checkout, I-9 in onboarding, title in a listing page. The credential membrane travels with the capability: when your user hits a reserved act, we route to our own signer on your behalf. You never build a lawyer network.

Priced like infrastructure, not like a law firm.

data
Keyless first value. Free tier, then metered with a hard spend ceiling you set. Deep commercial corpora sit behind the paid meter.
services
Metered per run. Drafting is compute, priced like compute. Provisional patent draft: free; USPTO fees pass through; done-for-you filing ~$99.
commerce (reserved)
Flat per act, floored by signer economics, not partner rates. Utility filing: on the order of a few hundred dollars against an $8–15k incumbent — and it ratchets down with volume.

Exact rates at early access. Ceilings are hard: your agent can never spend past what you set.

The membrane is the API. Get behind it early.

Patent is live first; trademark, corporate, litigation, tax, and immigration clone the shape. Early-access partners get catalog input and wholesale B2A2D terms.

Read the docs

Credentialed professional? You’re the supply side → gigs.lawyer

No live service yet. Patent goes first; we write when it’s callable. Nothing on this page is legal advice.