How to use the termination-review agent skill for Claude

What the termination-review skill makes the agent do

Agent skills are folders of instructions that Claude loads when a request matches them. This one is named termination-review and is part of the Claude for Legal employment-legal plugin. When you describe a termination, the agent follows a set order: it loads your practice configuration, collects the basic facts, runs a high-risk flag scan, checks final pay timing for the employee's jurisdiction, and addresses severance and release terms if they apply.

If any high-risk flag fires, the skill tells the agent to escalate and not to proceed without sign-off. The skill's own documentation says it does not state the law. Jurisdiction-specific rules and release consideration periods are researched and cited at the time of each review.

• Collects basic facts: employee role or name, jurisdiction, reason for termination, tenure, age, whether it is part of a group termination, and the planned term date.
• Scans for eight default flags: recent complaint, protected leave, protected class plus timing, whistleblower activity, thin documentation, comparator problem, contract or handbook promise, and exempt misclassification.
• Checks jurisdiction items: final-pay timing, accrued-PTO payout, required notices, and mass-layoff or plant-closing notice rules.
• Escalates per your configured table before the termination proceeds.

Install the termination-review skill

Download the ZIP file from this page, then install it in one of the two ways below. The skill is a single file named SKILL.md inside the package.

Personal install: unzip the download into ~/.claude/skills/ so the skill is available across your projects. Project install: unzip it into the .claude/skills/ folder inside a specific project so it applies only there.

Claude apps: you can instead upload the ZIP in the Claude apps under Settings, then Capabilities, then Skills.

• Personal folder: ~/.claude/skills/
• Project folder: .claude/skills/ inside your project
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills

Set up the required configuration file

The skill depends on a practice configuration file that it expects to exist. It loads termination review triggers, high-risk flags, severance practice and jurisdiction rules from this file. Without it, the skill cannot run as designed, so set it up before your first review.

The file must be located at ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/employment-legal/CLAUDE.md. The skill also relies on the related wage-hour-qa and matter-workspace skills, which it refers to for wage calculations and matter folders.

• Required file: ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/employment-legal/CLAUDE.md
• Related skills it references: wage-hour-qa and matter-workspace

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You can invoke the skill with the slash command /termination-review followed by a description of the termination or attached documentation. You can also simply describe the situation in plain language. The skill's description lists phrases that should activate it.

Phrases from the skill description include 'reviewing a termination', 'can we fire this person', 'term review', or any description of a termination scenario. Give as many facts as you have, such as role, state, tenure, age and reason. The agent will ask for anything missing from the basic-facts step.

• Reviewing a termination for a sales associate in Colorado.
• Can we fire this person? They recently filed an HR complaint.
• Term review: performance reason, employee returned from parental leave last month.
• Here is the offer letter and handbook for an employee we want to let go. Walk the termination review.

Example of a review and what to expect

Suppose you ask for a review of a salaried employee in California with a title containing 'coordinator' who is classified as exempt. The skill's exempt misclassification flag checks three conditions: a high exempt-threshold state, exempt classification, and a risky title. When all three apply, the agent prints a red warning and routes the question to the wage-hour-qa skill for a classification check.

The skill does not calculate back pay or settlement amounts itself. It routes those numbers to the wage-hour-qa process and marks them for verification by wage-and-hour counsel. Expect the output to start with the work-product header from your configuration and to list each flag as clear, fired, or needing information.

• Any fired flag means escalate before the termination proceeds, not after.
• Back-pay figures are routed out and marked [verify] rather than asserted.
• If the research tool returns few or no results for a jurisdiction rule, the skill reports what it found and stops instead of filling the gap from web search or model knowledge.

Requirements and safety notes

The skill needs the employment-legal configuration file and access to the wage-hour-qa and matter-workspace skills. It does not run scripts and does not use the network itself. Its jurisdiction research depends on the legal research tool configured in your practice setup.

Matter workspaces are optional. If matter workspaces are disabled in your practice configuration, which the file describes as the default for in-house users, the skill uses practice-level context. When enabled, outputs are written to a matter folder under the employment-legal config directory, and the skill does not read other matters' files unless cross-matter context is turned on.

• Runs scripts: no
• Uses network: no
• Licence: Apache-2.0
• Outputs go to the matter folder only when matter workspaces are enabled.

Tips for getting useful results

Keep the configuration file current, since the flags, severance practice and jurisdiction table all come from it. Give the agent accurate facts, especially age, tenure, leave status and any recent complaints, because the flags depend on them.

Treat the output as a checklist and first-pass aid. The skill's own documentation says its output needs review by employment counsel before any decision is final.

• Update the configuration file whenever your flags or severance practice change.
• Provide documentation such as the offer letter, handbook and performance warnings when you have them.
• Do not rely on the output for back-pay or settlement figures; route those to wage-and-hour counsel.