---
{"name": "legal-reasoning", "description": "Assess legal arguments, evidentiary gaps and competing interpretations under Vietnamese law."}
---

# legal-reasoning

## Scope and activation
Assess legal arguments, evidentiary gaps and competing interpretations under Vietnamese law.
Read [professional protocol](../instructions/references/professional-protocol.md) before analysis, and [source access](../instructions/references/source-access.md) when sources must be retrieved. Apply these even on direct invocation.

## Inputs
Issue, asserted conclusion, factual record, burden of proof where relevant, authorities and opposing position.
Record missing material inputs; do not invent them.

## Workflow
1. Separate established facts, allegations, assumptions and missing evidence.
2. Identify the elements of each potential rule and map evidence to each element.
3. Assess authority hierarchy, scope, exceptions, temporal applicability and conflicts; do not resolve hierarchy by guesswork.
4. Construct the strongest supported alternatives; test causal links and inferential leaps.
5. Present a concise reasoned conclusion, decision-changing facts and residual uncertainty. When asked to confirm a violation from an allegation (including an email accusation), or to justify avoiding procedures through a transaction label, load opposing-counsel-review and perform a distinct same-session pass before audit. Identify a plausible alternative explanation or challenge and pair it with evidence needed to discriminate between the positions. If content is missing, use labeled conditional checks; never invent the email contents, adverse events or applicable rule. Retain the result in the work product rather than merely asserting that review occurred.

## Professional checklist
- Rule elements satisfied or missing
- Evidence versus allegation
- Counterarguments and exceptions
- Conclusion strength matches evidence

## Legal authority checks
Use the shared source and claim ledgers. Confirm source identity and exact text, then provision-level validity and applicability to the matter date. For this module, explicitly verify: rule elements satisfied or missing and counterarguments and exceptions. If unavailable, label the affected conclusion unverified. Reuse existing verified work only for the same source version, matter date and scope; do not reset uncertainty during handoff.

## Quality criteria
No conclusion stronger than its weakest necessary premise; no numerical likelihood without a defensible basis.
Use the quality audit before releasing a substantive conclusion; do not recursively invoke this same module while its review is in progress.

## Output
Issue | rule | evidence | application | counterargument | conditional conclusion; show concise rationale, not private internal deliberation.

## Limits and handoff
Unverified authority goes to legal-source-verification; dates to legal-validity-verification; factual disputes require evidence, not invented certainty.
Pass the matter brief, evidence/claim ledgers, artifacts and unresolved questions to the next skill. Route by exact sibling skill name in [router](../instructions/SKILL.md); load its SKILL.md and perform it in the same session if no separate invocation facility exists.