Agent skills for insolvency research

Ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini a legal question and they'll answer confidently — but a Stanford study found they make things up 58–80% of the time. Fake case names, invented citations, wrong holdings. Over 729 lawyers have been caught filing pleadings with AI-fabricated authorities since 2023.

Agent skills fix this. Specialist capabilities you plug into your AI assistant that let it read actual sources — fetch judgments from AustLII, pull citation networks from Jade, query Federal Court metadata, and cross-reference firm commentary. It can still misinterpret, but it can't invent a case it just downloaded.

Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis built billion-dollar businesses selling access to case law and legal research. Agent skills give that same access to an AI assistant. When Anthropic shipped legal skills for Claude in February 2026, it wiped $285 billion off legal tech stocks in a single day. Thomson Reuters fell 16%. LexisNexis parent RELX fell 14%.

We've built four agent skills for insolvency research — AustLII, Federal Court, Jade, and legal commentary. Here's what they look like in action. Say you ask: "Is Peldan v Anderson still good law?"

Skill

/austlii fetch HCA/2006/48 → /jade scrape article/2193 → /legal-commentary "Peldan v Anderson s 121"
Agent chains three skills together to answer your question

AustLII

All Australian courts. Full judgment text, catchwords, citations.

Skill

/austlii fetch HCA/2006/48
Fetches full judgment text + metadata from austlii.edu.au

Returns

Peldan v Anderson [2006] HCA 48; 80 ALJR 1588; 229 ALR 432

High Court of Australia · 4 October 2006 · Gummow ACJ, Kirby, Hayne, Callinan and Crennan JJ

"Bankruptcy - Transfers to defeat creditors - s 121(1)(a) of the Bankruptcy Act 1966 (Cth) - Where the bankrupt unilaterally severed a joint tenancy in Torrens title land - Whether s 121(9)(b) operated so as to take the bankrupt to have transferred property to his wife..."

Federal Court

FCA and FCAFC decisions. Structured metadata — catchwords, legislation, cases cited.

Skill

/fedcourt search "section 121" --legislation "Bankruptcy Act 1966 s 121"
Searches judgments.fedcourt.gov.au, filtering by legislation cited

Returns 5 cases

Weston (Trustee) v Sanna (No 7) [2025] FCA 1205

Federal Court of Australia · 2025

Simmons v Giezekamp [2025] FCA 584

Federal Court of Australia · 2025

Paule v Kambouris [2025] FCA 539

Federal Court of Australia · 2025

HBSY Pty Ltd v Lewis (No 2) [2025] FCAFC 44

Full Federal Court · 2025

Chu v Lin, in the matter of Gold Stone Capital (No 8) [2024] FCA 1520

Federal Court of Australia · 2024

Jade

Citation network — which cases cite which, and how often. Search or fetch individual cases.

Skill

/jade search "Peldan v Anderson"
Searches jade.io, extracts article links from results

Returns 5 cases

Peldan v Anderson

jade.io/article/2193

State of Queensland v Walters

jade.io/article/57239

Chapman v Chapman

jade.io/article/342925

Frost v Sheahan

jade.io/article/263014

HST Building Group Pty Ltd v Naudi

jade.io/article/708060

Skill

/jade scrape "https://jade.io/article/2193"
Opens jade.io in headless browser → extracts citation network + judgment text

Returns

Peldan v Anderson [2006] HCA 48; 227 CLR 471

122 citations across 58 Jade documents · Not overturned

Distinguished once

Bassett v Registrar of Titles [2021] QSC 341 — distinguished on 2013 amendments to s 59(2) Land Title Act, but court ultimately upheld Peldan's principles.

Recent citing cases

Nguyen v Inspector-General [2026] ARTA 142 · Les Denny v Valmorbida [2025] VSCA 319 · Bosanac v Commissioner of Taxation [2022] HCA 34

Still good law — cited by 5 High Court decisions including Bosanac v Commissioner of Taxation [2022] HCA 34. The one distinguishing case (Bassett) actually confirmed the core principles.

Legal commentary

Expert analysis from insolvency practitioners and law firms including Worrells, Chamberlains, SV Partners, Clayton Utz, Allens, Corrs, Piper Alderman, and 16 others.

Skill

/legal-commentary "s 121 transfers to defeat creditors"
Searches 23 curated insolvency and law firm sites

Returns 5 results, agent picks the best 3

Void & Uncommercial Transactions in Bankruptcy

worrells.net.au · 2025

"Actions under section 121 can start at any time after the trustee discovers the transaction. Unlike other recovery provisions, a s 121 transaction involves fraud and can be pursued vigorously."

Bankruptcy 101: Voidable Transactions

chamberlains.com.au · 2020

"A transfer is void if the transferor's main purpose was to prevent, hinder or delay property being available to creditors. Section 121(4) offers protections for innocent transferees."

Transferring your assets pre-bankruptcy isn't a cheat code

worrells.net.au · August 2024

"Trustees typically have six years to challenge transactions under ss 118, 120, 121. For s 121A and s 128B/128C, trustees can act at any time."

The agent flagged that SV Partners conflates s 120 elements (insolvency test) with s 121 (intent test) — a factual error caught by cross-referencing against Worrells and Chamberlains.

Practical use: fact-checking a legal page

Firms publish case notes, client alerts, and guides all the time. Here's how we fact-checked our own s 121 guide before publishing — the same workflow applies to any legal content.

Step 1 — verify case citations

/austlii fetch HCA/2006/48
Fetches full judgment → agent compares against the guide's claims

Step 2 — check for cases we missed

/fedcourt search "section 121" --legislation "Bankruptcy Act 1966 s 121"
Found Weston v Sanna [2025] FCA 1205 — new case, should add

Step 3 — check nothing's been overturned

/jade scrape "https://jade.io/article/2193"
122 citations, distinguished once but principles upheld — still good law

Step 4 — cross-reference against firm commentary

/legal-commentary "s 121 transfers to defeat creditors"
Worrells confirms, Chamberlains adds s 121(4) defence detail the guide missed

Right now, researching case law for a matter means hours on AustLII, cross-checking Jade, reading through firm articles hoping nothing's been overturned. With skills, your AI assistant does that in seconds — and shows you exactly where it got each answer. We're building these skills for insolvency practitioners. If you want to bring them into your practice, .

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