In-House Counsel Document Format — Multi-Track House Style

Author: Alessandro Dardano. Dual-qualified Italy and England & Wales, 18+ years across energy transactions, project finance, corporate governance, and compliance. Originally developed for in-house use, generalised for publication.

Version 2.3 — restructured for progressive disclosure: this SKILL.md is now a lean router, and the detailed material lives in references/ modules that are read only when relevant. The MC template is a deployer-supplied, optional asset (assets/inhouse-mc-template.docx); where it is absent, MC tracks fall back to docx-js native automatic numbering (Environment 2). v2.3 corrects the earlier text that implied the template was bundled, aligns the assets/ README accordingly, and adds a reformatting note on numbering that is itself cross-referenced (e.g., lettered article inserts). Substantive drafting content is unchanged from v2.1.

Licensed under Apache 2.0. © 2026 Alessandro Dardano. See LICENSE file for terms.

Disclaimer. This skill encodes document drafting and formatting conventions. It is not legal advice. Substantive legal content (clause selection, position, commercial terms, jurisdiction-specific carve-outs) produced using this skill remains the responsibility of qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. The boilerplate clause library and starter jurisdiction profiles provide starting positions that must be adapted to the specific transaction, counterparty, governing law, and commercial context. Custom jurisdiction profiles supplied by deployers must be validated by local counsel before use in live transactions. Use of this skill does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Purpose

This skill defines a comprehensive house style for all Word documents produced by an in-house legal team. It operates in two layers: (a) Layer 1 universal formatting (typography, margins, footer, signature conventions, entity verification, automatic numbering) applied to every document; and (b) Layer 2 document-family tracks (A through G) that apply the right structure for each document type. Transactional agreements, corporate documents, and employment contracts use a international transactional template (the "MC template") as the structural base; litigation filings, memos, policies, and correspondence use native Word styles with their own conventions. Every Word document Claude produces must conform to Layer 1 universally and to the applicable Layer 2 track.

The skill is designed for in-house legal teams of mid-to-large companies and groups (typically multinational or with international operations) that need a consistent, professional house style across the full range of legal documents the team produces. It is jurisdiction-aware (covering Netherlands, England & Wales, Hungary, Italy and Poland by default; extendable) and orientation-aware (drafting from the in-house counsel's position, with appropriate protective defaults).

Terminology

Throughout this skill, the following abbreviations are used: