AI agents call list_available_courts to retrieve information from Legal without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool only queries and returns metadata about available courts—it does not modify, execute, delete, or create any data. It is a simple informational lookup with no capability to affect state or trigger external operations. The blast radius of misuse is minimal, as an AI agent could at worst retrieve redundant court information.
From the tool's definition Tool name 'list_available_courts' and description 'List all available US courts and their short codes' indicate a retrieval operation with no side effects.
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
List all available US courts and their short codes. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Legal MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the Legal MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for list_available_courts: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Legal. Nothing to install.
list_available_courts is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the list_available_courts rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for list_available_courts. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
list_available_courts is provided by the Legal MCP server (jscottym/legal-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Every MCP server has a record like this.
Type a name, get the same breakdown: verified identity, auth posture, risk grade, capabilities, recommended policy.
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