Oral Argument — Development skill for Claude Code

oral-argument

A Claude skill that prepares a lawyer for an adversarial proceeding the way Neal Katyal's prep team prepared him for a SCOTUS argument.

Profile the tribunal from prior opinions and questions. Predict the specific questions you will face. Map narrow "escape routes" each judge can walk through without abandoning their commitments. Spar adversarially until only the strongest answers survive.

The model is the sparring partner. The human still wins the case.

Why this exists

In November 2025 Neal Katyal argued the SCOTUS tariffs case. His prep partner, "Harvey," was trained on every question every justice had asked in 25 years and every opinion they had written. Harvey predicted the bench near-verbatim and surfaced the narrow door the Chief Justice walked through.

The technique is reproducible. The skill encodes it.

What it does

You give Claude a hearing context: case, posture, the named tribunal members, the lawyer's draft brief or theory of the case. The skill runs five phases:

1. Profile the tribunal. One-page bullet profile per decision-maker — doctrinal commitments, recurring questions, tells in concurrences, institutional concerns, coalition behavior, phrasing tics.
2. Predict the bench. 3–7 questions per judge, each annotated with the doctrinal hook, the worry behind the question, and an attack-rank.
3. Map escape routes. For each plausibly hostile judge, find the narrow holding they could sign onto without abandoning a prior commitment. Hand them the door open.
4. Spar adversarially. Round-trip the lawyer's draft answers against the worst question on the bench. Iterate until the answer survives.
5. End with the human. Close every session by reminding the lawyer what only they can do at the podium: listen, connect, adjust tone, see the worry behind the question.

See [examples/example-bench.md](examples/example-bench.md) for the canonical output.

When to use

• Appellate oral argument prep
• Motion hearing pr