Claude Employment-Legal Plugin
Run Anthropic's employment-legal plugin: 20+ skills covering hiring review, termination review, policy drafting, jurisdiction-aware wage/hour Q&A, FMLA/state-leave tracking, internal investigations, and international expansion. 8 lessons + certificate.
Anthropic shipped an employment counsel plugin on May 12, 2026 — and it’s jurisdiction-aware out of the box
The employment-legal plugin covers what employment counsel actually do day to day: termination review, hiring review, policy drafting, jurisdiction-aware wage/hour Q&A, internal investigations, FMLA and state-leave tracking, and international expansion. 20+ skills total, one scheduled agent (leave-tracker, Monday weekly).
The architectural choice that makes this plugin actually useful: it knows California final pay is due on the last day and New York’s is the next regular payday. Termination reviews check the right state’s rules. Hiring reviews flag restrictive covenants based on where the employee will work. Policy drafting produces state supplements automatically. The plugin’s cold-start interview learns your jurisdictional footprint at setup, then every subsequent skill applies the right jurisdiction’s rules.
This course walks the 20+ skills: cold-start, hiring-review, termination-review, worker-classification, policy-drafting, handbook-updates, wage-hour-qa, investigation-open / -add / -query / -memo / -summary, leave-tracker, log-leave, expansion-kickoff / -update, matter-workspace, customize. You’ll learn FLSA exempt vs nonexempt classification, OWBPA release requirements for 40+ workers, restrictive covenant enforceability across states (CA mostly unenforceable; FL favorable; the recent FTC noncompete rule), WARN Act + state mini-WARN, ADA-leave as accommodation, the privilege protection mechanism in the investigation workflow, and international expansion playbook activation.
You’ll come out with a CLAUDE.md profile installed at ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/employment-legal/CLAUDE.md, a sanitized sample investigation file, a jurisdictional escalation table, a working leave register, and a credential (EMP-XXXXXX) that documents the work. The plugin costs nothing beyond your Claude Pro subscription. The operating discipline this course teaches is the difference between AI that helps with employment work and AI that you’d actually deploy on a high-stakes termination with PR exposure.
What You'll Learn
- Install and cold-start Anthropic's employment-legal plugin with your jurisdictional footprint and escalation rules
- Run `termination-review`, `hiring-review`, and `worker-classification` against state-specific rules (CA / NY / TX final pay; FLSA exempt vs nonexempt)
- Operate the investigation workflow (open / add / query / memo / summary) under attorney-client privilege protection
- Configure `leave-tracker` for FMLA, CFRA, NY PFL, USERRA, and ADA-as-accommodation deadline tracking
- Draft policies with state supplements and run jurisdiction-aware wage/hour Q&A across your operating states
After This Course, You Can
What You'll Build
Course Syllabus
Prerequisites
- Active employment counsel or HR-legal role; in-house GC handling employment matters; outside counsel handling employment work
- Recommended: The Hallucination Defense Playbook (HDP) for the verification protocol that wraps every plugin output
- Claude Cowork or Claude Code installed; ability to install plugins from the Anthropic marketplace
Who Is This For?
- In-house employment counsel handling termination, hiring, policy, and investigation work
- HR business partners using the plugin for first-line review and handbook questions
- GCs at multi-state employers (especially CA + NY + TX combination)
- Outside employment counsel handling multi-jurisdictional clients
- Legal Ops at companies with international expansion plans
- Compliance leaders tracking wage/hour, classification, and leave-law compliance
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the plugin replace external research tools like BNA, Practical Law, or Lexis Employment?
No. The plugin's README explicitly notes: 'Skills in this plugin intentionally do not store substantive legal rules.' Every jurisdiction-specific rule is researched and cited at the time of review. Connect Practical Law, BNA, or your firm's internal research tools as MCP servers; the plugin uses them. Without those tools, every cite is tagged `[verify]` and the lawyer must check.
How does the leave-tracker scheduled agent know my FMLA deadlines?
After you log leaves via `/employment-legal:log-leave`, the agent reads from the leave register, applies FMLA calculations (12 weeks per rolling 12-month period; intermittent leave rules), state-specific equivalents (CFRA, NY PFL, MA PFML), USERRA reemployment timing, and ADA-as-accommodation review windows. Weekly Monday alert surfaces decisions needing attention.
Investigations and privilege — how does the plugin keep work product protected?
The investigation skills (`investigation-open`, `-add`, `-query`, `-memo`, `-summary`) write to a separate investigation log path. The `investigation-memo` skill specifically produces a privileged work-product memo. The `investigation-summary` skill produces audience-specific summaries that strip privileged content for non-attorney audiences. Privilege is preserved through the file architecture, not just the output text.
Can HR business partners use the plugin without supervising counsel?
For routine policy questions, handbook updates, and first-line wage/hour Q&A — yes, with the caveat that output is a draft for attorney review per the README. For terminations, investigations, and high-risk hiring (restrictive covenants, senior roles, classified positions), supervising employment counsel review is expected. The plugin produces drafts; counsel decides.
How does this work alongside the other practice-area plugins?
Employment-legal pairs with: Commercial-Legal (employment-related commercial contracts), Corporate-Legal (board consents for executive compensation), Litigation-Legal (employment litigation that emerges from a termination or investigation), and HDP for the verification rail across all plugin outputs.
