MCP server · Open source · No API key
BAILII Case Law
Search UK court judgments on BAILII, with full text and section extraction. Local-only by necessity: BAILII blocks cloud IPs, so it has to run from your own machine.
Install
uvx bailii-mcpThis one runs on your machine over stdio rather than as a hosted endpoint, so there is no URL to paste.
Data sources
What it connects to
- BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute)
Setup
Takes about 30 seconds
Pick the app you use. Paste one URL. That's it.
claude.ai and ChatGPT (web) — use a desktop client instead
Not a limitation of this server, and nothing to do with Claude or ChatGPT dropping support. Both web apps reach an MCP server from their own cloud rather than from your device, so the server has to be on the public internet. This one runs as a process on your machine, so there is nothing for them to dial.
Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor all run local servers happily — they launch it as a subprocess. Use one of those, below.
Claude Desktop
Add this to claude_desktop_config.json. You need uv installed; uvx fetches the package on first run.
{
"mcpServers": {
"bailii": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["bailii-mcp"]
}
}
}If it doesn't start, use the absolute path to uvx (find it with which uvx) rather than the bare name. Claude Desktop launches config commands with a minimal PATH, so short names often fail even when they work in your terminal.
Claude Code
claude mcp add bailii -- uvx bailii-mcpOr commit it to the repo so your team picks it up:
claude mcp add --scope project bailii -- uvx bailii-mcpCursor and other editors
Add to .cursor/mcp.json in the project, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json globally:
{
"mcpServers": {
"bailii": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["bailii-mcp"]
}
}
}No API key. Open source. Free to use.
Need this wired into your own systems?
The server covers public data. If you need it connected to your own records, internal tools, or a workflow built around your team, that's what we do.