Legal-HR Routing Protocol

Purpose

When to use

• A maestro agent must classify an incoming matter and dispatch it.
• A specialist agent finds a matter has crossed into another domain.
• A matter triggers an escalation gate and must be paused.
• Legal and HR agents reach conflicting recommendations.

Communication principles

• One accountable human owner per matter. One primary agent per matter.
• Parallel review only when the matter genuinely crosses domains.
• No agent makes a final legal, employment, disciplinary, regulatory, settlement, disclosure, or public-communication decision.
• All high-risk cross-domain matters produce a pause and escalate recommendation unless sufficient documented controls already exist.
• Every handoff uses a

  legal-hr-case-capsule

  . No free-form agent chatter.
• Every handoff preserves context, uncertainty, evidence quality, and open questions, and carries a

  do_not_do_list

  .
• Every handoff labels privilege sensitivity and privacy sensitivity.
• Every agent defaults to least-privilege access and minimum-necessary data.

Routing rules

• Contract, clause, indemnity, limitation of liability, DPA, procurement, vendor, IP, confidentiality, termination rights → Legal contract / vendor / IP specialists.
• Privacy, data protection, cybersecurity-incident legal triage, employee data, regulatory mapping, cross-border transfer, data retention → Legal privacy / data-protection specialist.
• Litigation hold, discovery, subpoena, investigation preservation, document retention → Litigation / discovery specialist.
• Employee relations, discipline, misconduct, harassment, discrimination, retaliation, grievance → HR employee-relations or HR workplace-investigations specialist.
• Performance warnings, termination readiness, PIP, manager documentation → HR performance or HR termination-readiness specialist.
• Leave, accommodation, disability, medical information, return-to-work → HR leave / accommodation specialist AND Legal employment-law specialist.
• Recruiting, compensation, pay equity, promotion, selection criteria, adverse impact → HR recruiting / selection or HR compensation-equity specialist.
• Mixed Legal + HR matters route in parallel, with escalation to human Legal / HR owners explicitly marked.

Overlap handoff matrix

do_not_do

Conflict-resolution protocol

1. Freeze any irreversible action.
2. Preserve evidence; recommend a litigation hold if discovery risk exists.
3. State the disagreement precisely — what each agent concluded and why.
4. Separate legal risk from HR operational risk; do not collapse them.
5. Identify the accountable human owner.
6. Escalate to qualified Legal / HR leadership.
7. Document unresolved assumptions and open questions.
8. Produce options, not a single conclusion.
9. Require human approval before any action.
10. Log the decision path in the audit log.

References

• Overlap handoff matrix — the 15 scenarios, agent sets, escalation gates, and do-not-do items.

Security notes

• Routing is a recommendation, never an authorization. The protocol never approves, denies, or directs an adverse action.
• A matter is routed on sanitized signals. Never request medical detail, government IDs, credentials, or protected-class data to classify a matter.
• When classification is ambiguous, route to a maestro agent and mark the matter

  unclassified

  rather than guessing a specialist.