Obtain an API access token from vLex by authenticating with your API credentials against the vLex authentication endpoint
POST to the vLex search endpoint with a JSON body specifying the query string, jurisdiction codes (e.g., US-FED for US federal), content type filters (cases, legislation, secondary sources), and pagination parameters
Iterate through the search result set using the provided pagination mechanism, collecting document IDs and citation metadata for each hit
For each document of interest, call the document retrieval endpoint using the document ID to fetch the full text, headnotes, and citation data
Parse the returned document structure to extract holding summaries, cited-by references, and treatment indicators for downstream research aggregation
Known gotchas
vLex API access is subscription-gated and jurisdictional; even with API credentials, content outside the subscribed jurisdiction bundles returns a 403 or empty results rather than an informative error
Full document retrieval counts against per-document access quotas in some vLex subscription tiers; bulk document fetching without quota awareness can exhaust the content budget quickly
vLex document IDs are internal and do not correspond to public citation strings; mapping between a citation (e.g., a case reporter citation) and a vLex document ID requires a separate citation-resolution search call before the document can be fetched directly
Give your agent this knowledge — and 200+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp