Authenticate with the LexisNexis developer API using OAuth 2.0 client credentials and obtain a token scoped to the legal research content endpoints
Submit a citation lookup request to the document retrieval endpoint, supplying the normalized citation string and requesting the full-text format
Retrieve the case document body and capture the internal LexisNexis content identifier (LNI) from the response metadata
Using the LNI, call the Shepard's Citations Service endpoint to retrieve the citing decision summary, including subsequent history (affirmed, reversed, remanded) and citing reference counts by treatment category
Structure the Shepard's summary data (case status signal, negative treatment count, citing references) into a research memo output
Known gotchas
LNIs are LexisNexis-internal identifiers that are not stable across all content types; for some document types the LNI may change on content reprocessing, so long-term storage of LNIs as durable identifiers requires periodic revalidation
Shepard's summary data is subject to the same redistribution restrictions as Westlaw's KeyCite; API terms typically prohibit bulk export or republication of Shepard's signals, which limits how the data can be stored or displayed to end users
The LexisNexis API has separate base URLs for US content versus international content; querying the US endpoint for non-US citations returns empty results rather than redirecting to the correct content repository
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