Legal Document Analyzer

AI-assisted contract review. Upload a legal document (PDF or TXT) and get a structured analysis: document type, plain-English summary, important clauses, legal risks with a 0–100 risk score, key deadlines, and recommended follow-up tasks.

Architecture

Three services:

• web — Next.js 16 + React 19 + HeroUI v3 (Tailwind v4) frontend and API routes.
• mcp — a Python Model Context Protocol server exposing an analyze_document tool that calls Claude (claude-opus-4-8) with structured outputs.
• db — PostgreSQL, storing each analysis (full result as JSONB).

Browser → /api/analyze (web) → MCP client → MCP server → Claude
                  │                                         │
                  └────────────── Postgres ◄───────── structured result

Prerequisites

• A Claude API key from https://console.claude.com (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY).
• Either Docker (recommended), or Node 22+, pnpm 11.9.0, Python 3.12+, and uv for local development.

Quick start (Docker — recommended)

cp .env.example .env          # then edit .env and set a real ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
docker compose up --build

Open http://localhost:3000. Docker Compose reads .env automatically for the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY substitution, builds the web and MCP images, and starts Postgres with the schema in docker/init.sql applied on first run.

Local development (hot reload)

Run Postgres in Docker, and the web + MCP servers natively:

# 1. Environment
cp .env.example .env          # set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

# 2. Database
docker compose up -d db

# 3. MCP server (terminal A)
cd mcp
uv sync
uv run --env-file ../.env python src/legal_server.py   # http://localhost:8000

# 4. Web app (terminal B)
pnpm install
pnpm dev                                                # http://localhost:3000

The MCP server is a separate process and must be running for analysis to work; if it is down, the UI shows "Analysis failed. Is the MCP server running?".

Environment variables

Variable	Used by	Example
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	mcp	sk-ant-...
DATABASE_URL	web	postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/legal_analyzer
MCP_SERVER_URL	web	http://localhost:8000

In Docker Compose, DATABASE_URL and MCP_SERVER_URL are set automatically; only ANTHROPIC_API_KEY needs to be in .env. Without DATABASE_URL, the app still analyzes documents — it just skips persistence.

Usage

1. Open http://localhost:3000.
2. Drag in (or choose) a contract as PDF or TXT.
3. Click Analyze Document. PDFs are read natively by Claude; analysis takes ~15–60s depending on length.
4. Review the summary, risk score, clauses, deadlines, and follow-up tasks. Each analysis is saved; GET /api/cases lists past analyses.

Project layout

app/            Next.js App Router pages + API routes (/api/analyze, /api/cases)
components/     UI components (upload, summary, risk, clauses, deadlines, tasks)
lib/            types, Postgres client (db.ts), MCP client (mcp.ts)
mcp/            Python MCP server (src/legal_server.py)
docker/         Dockerfiles + Postgres init.sql
docs/           Project documentation