Evidence the run may read
- Invoice and time narratives
- Engagement terms and billing guidelines
- Matter and budget context
production blueprint · legal
Outside counsel invoice review agent blueprint.
Compare invoice lines with approved engagement and billing guidance and prepare exceptions for legal operations.
Search intent: AI agent for legal invoice review
Published by a2a cloudProduct-source methodology →
01 · the contract
Start from a bounded job, not a blank chat box.
trigger
An outside counsel invoice enters review.
owner
qualified legal reviewer
agent stops at
An authorized legal or finance owner approves payment, adjustment, or counsel follow-up.
KPI · decrease
legal invoice review time (minutes). Measure complete invoice to authorized disposition.
outputs
Artifacts the run must produce
- Guideline comparison
- Exception and question list
- Reviewer recommendation
02 · topology
Small specialists. Named handoffs. One accountable decision.
Each stage produces an artifact another stage can inspect. The final node is a person, not an autonomous write to an external system.
- 01
intake
Validate and normalize the outside counsel invoice review inputs.
- 02
invoice line normalizer
Produce the guideline comparison.
- 03
guideline analyst
Produce the exception and question list.
- 04
legal operations reviewer
Challenge the outside counsel invoice review result and prepare an approval packet.
- 05
qualified legal reviewer
An authorized legal or finance owner approves payment, adjustment, or counsel follow-up.
intake→ validated input packet →invoice-line-normalizer
invoice-line-normalizer→ Guideline comparison →guideline-analyst
guideline-analyst→ Exception and question list →legal-operations-reviewer
legal-operations-reviewer→ approval packet with evidence references →human-approver
03 · authority
Grant the run only what this case needs.
Source material is read-only. Drafts land in a case-specific output path. Tools may read or propose; the human gate owns the external write.
case inputs
workspace/legal/outside-counsel-invoice-review/inputs/**Read only the evidence attached to this workflow instance.
case outputs
workspace/legal/outside-counsel-invoice-review/outputs/**Write drafts and evidence artifacts without modifying source records.
approved tools
legal:outside-counsel-invoice-review:read-or-proposeInvoke only tools explicitly granted for this run; external writes remain gated.
04 · implementation
A private, bounded starting manifest.
The blueprint starts private, caps its DAG, disables replanning, and exposes no public endpoint. Add only the tools and data adapters this workflow has approved.
a2a.yamlsafe starting point
name: legal-outside-counsel-invoice-review
version: 0.1.0
entrypoint: agent:BlueprintAgent
expose:
public: false
composition:
planning: deterministic_dag
max_nodes: 6
max_parallel: 1
max_replans: 005 · acceptance test
Pass only with evidence.
- 01
Evidence traceability
Every material conclusion cites an input artifact or a scoped tool result from this run.
- 02
Every exception identifies the line, guideline, amount, and evidence; the agent never moves funds.
Every exception identifies the line, guideline, amount, and evidence; the agent never moves funds.
- 03
Approval boundary
The run stops at a proposal and records the human decision before any external side effect.
failure containment
Stop small. Preserve the evidence.
Matter mapping, rate terms, currency, or approval evidence is incomplete.
Containment: Return a partial result with unresolved items; do not broaden scope or perform an external write.
Operator: Attach the missing evidence, narrow the brief, or explicitly approve a new scoped run.
A required input or tool grant is unavailable.
Containment: Stop the affected branch and preserve completed artifacts in the case output workspace.
Operator: Grant only the missing resource or continue with that branch marked out of scope.
06 · proof
Sign the run facts. Keep money in the billing ledger.
Current platform receipts sign caller identity or classification, skill, bounded input evidence, verified grant IDs when present, outcome or result preview, and timing. Optional file, tool, artifact, handoff, evaluation, and review fields require separate instrumentation and are not populated by default. Price, fees, payouts, and later human approvals remain separate platform records.
The example uses only fields populated by the current platform sealing paths. It is illustrative, not a record of a real customer run.
ExecutionReceipt · selected fieldsEd25519 token
{
"receipt_id": "rcpt_01J...",
"schema_version": 1,
"agent_name": "legal-outside-counsel-invoice-review",
"caller": "user:workflow-owner",
"task_id": "case_outside_counsel_invoice_review",
"skill_name": "outside_counsel_invoice_review",
"input_hash": "4d7c...9a2f",
"grant_ids": [
"grt_case_inputs",
"grt_tool_propose"
],
"status": "ok",
"result_preview": "Output prepared: Guideline comparison. Human decision remains separate.",
"elapsed_ms": 4218
}related blueprints
Keep the operating model consistent.
Legal
Contract intake triage
Normalize a contract request, identify document and owner gaps, and route it under the approved legal intake policy.
Legal
NDA deviation review
Compare an NDA with an approved template and prepare a clause-level deviation packet for counsel.
Legal
Contract clause extraction
Extract specified clauses and attributes with source locations and confidence for a legal reviewer to verify.
put the pattern to work
Start private. Scope the authority. Require the decision.
Deploy the workflow as a bounded internal agent, verify its outputs and the receipt fields actually emitted, then expand only the scopes your acceptance test proves it needs.