Eleven step-by-step guides to using Claude Cowork in a litigation practice, in the order most practitioners need them. Each is a full page: what you need before you start, numbered steps, diagrams, worked examples, prompts to copy, and a short check at the end. Three worked examples and the checklists follow.
Getting set up
1. Install Claude Desktop, find your way around, and test it before you trust it
Download and install; what is on the screen; Chat, Projects and Cowork; the permission settings; the privacy settings to read first; an hour of tests that show what the tool gets wrong.
2. One folder per brief: set up the matter folder and connect it in Cowork
Why one folder per matter; the subfolders; copying the documents in; connecting the folder as a Cowork project; standing instructions; what Claude can and cannot do in the folder; the first inventory.
3. Make the documents readable: what a PDF is, what OCR does, and what Claude does on its own
Born-digital and scanned PDFs; what OCR does and does not tell you; converting scans in Acrobat or in Cowork; finding the pages that need a human look; settling what could not be read; sorting the hopper.
Making it repeatable
4. Build your first skill: a document-reading skill, written with Claude’s help
What a skill is; writing the brief; having Claude write the SKILL.md; reading and editing it; packaging, installing and enabling it under Customize; testing it; keeping it as a file you control.
5. Plugins: what they are, how to install one, and how to check it before it touches a matter
Skills, connectors, agents and hooks; the catalogue and other marketplaces; installing from a file; reading every component before use; testing on public material; updating and removing.
6. Projects, standing instructions and memory: say the important things once
Cowork projects and claude.ai projects; global instructions; a reference project for rules of court and style; linking it to the matter; managing memory; why instructions are not guarantees.
Doing the work
7. A first real task: index the brief, build a chronology, and check both
The index and how to check it; a one-page overview; the chronology with a source for every line; the five checks; recording what was checked.
8. Research with sources only: the research folder and the source pack
The one rule; leads are not research; downloading and recording judgments; confirming each is the case you think it is; the four parts of a source pack; the five sentences that make an answer checkable.
9. Check the draft: seven checks for every authority, two for every fact
Why existence is not enough; the seven checks; the two checks for facts; what Claude can and cannot do in the check; keeping a record; checking the version that is filed.
Working within the rules
10. What may go in: the confidentiality questions before any client document
Where documents go when attached, connected or linked; the five questions; four made-up examples; applying them to a Cowork folder; the one-line record; telling the attorney.
11. Fees and supervision: recording AI-assisted time, and checking a junior’s AI work
What counts as time; the fee narrative; agreeing costs in advance; briefing a junior on AI; what to ask when the work comes back; heads of chambers.
Worked examples
PDF intake: checking the text against the page — the document-reading routine as a skill, on a made-up forensic report.
The legibility check: Claude asks instead of guessing — settling handwriting, stamps and faint pages one question at a time.
The citation check: every quotation against the judgment on file — the check sheet, the five statuses, and what the sheet cannot tell you.
The short form
The checklists — four lists with boxes to tick: before a document goes in; after the documents are made readable; before a draft leaves; when a junior is using AI.
A note on products
The guides describe Claude Desktop and Cowork as they were on 24 September 2026, using Anthropic’s own documentation for the product facts. Menus move and names change; where a guide says where a button is, that is where it was on that date. The method does not depend on the buttons, and most of it carries over to other tools with the same features.