AI agents call lookup_citation 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 retrieves and resolves citation information from legal documents—a straightforward data lookup operation with no modification, deletion, or execution of external systems. The action is idempotent and produces no side effects. Low severity because misuse would only surface incorrect or irrelevant citation data, with minimal blast radius.
From the tool's definition Tool name 'lookup_citation' and function to 'resolve reporter citations found in free text' indicates a retrieval/query operation.
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
Resolve reporter citations found in free text (e.g. 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 lookup_citation: 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.
lookup_citation 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 lookup_citation 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 lookup_citation. 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.
lookup_citation is provided by the Legal MCP server (mcpservings/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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