Real Estate Cold-Start Interview

Real Estate Cold-Start Interview

Purpose

Conduct a structured, staged interview with a real-estate practice group — led by a supervising attorney or authorized designee — to gather the information required to populate practice-profiles/real-estate.md. The skill walks through all eight profile fields in sequence, records every answer, and assembles a filled draft of the profile for the practice group's review and approval. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review — not legal advice and not a final configuration.

Use When

• A team is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure practice-profiles/real-estate.md for the first time.
• A real-estate practice group is being onboarded to the library and no current profile exists.
• The library is being stood up for the first time and the real-estate area is included in scope.
• A practice group wishes to revisit or rebuild its profile from scratch rather than make incremental updates.

Required Inputs

• A knowledgeable person from the real-estate practice group — a supervising attorney or an authorized designee — who can answer questions about the group's jurisdiction, positions, escalation rules, and review requirements.
• Any existing playbooks, templates, source-of-truth documents, or standard-form documents the group already uses, so they can be referenced or cited in the profile.

Do Not Use When

• The group is actively working a live real-estate matter. This skill configures the library; it does not support an open matter.
• A practice-profiles/real-estate.md already exists and is current. In that case this is a refresh, not a cold start — though the skill may still be used to rebuild the profile deliberately.
• No authorized person is available to answer. Do not complete the interview with guessed or inferred answers; record all gaps as [CONFIRM: ...] placeholders.
• The purpose is to handle a specific real-estate matter (use the appropriate matter-level skill for that task).

Legal Safety Rules

• Produce draft legal work product for attorney review. This is not legal advice.
• Never guess or infer an answer to any interview question. If the interviewee cannot answer a question, record [CONFIRM: answer required from practice group] and move on.
• The filled profile is a draft. It must be reviewed and explicitly approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it governs any AgentCounsel work product.
• Do not invent standard positions, clause preferences, escalation thresholds, or review rules. Record only what the interviewee provides.
• Do not include client-specific facts, client names, matter identifiers, or privileged details in the profile. The profile is a reusable group-level configuration, not a matter record.
• Do not state or imply that any threshold, position, or rule in the profile satisfies a legal requirement under any jurisdiction. Jurisdiction-specific legal obligations are for the attorney to verify.
• Flag every item the interviewee defers or leaves open with a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder so the reviewer can see exactly what is unresolved.

Workflow

Stage 1 — Jurisdictions

Ask the interviewee:

• In which states or countries does the group handle real-estate matters most frequently — commercial, residential, industrial, mixed?
• Does the group regularly engage with multi-state portfolios, and which jurisdictions are most common?
• Are there municipal regimes — rent control / RSO, transfer-tax rules, building-code regimes — that drive a meaningful share of the work?
• Does the group regularly engage with foreign-jurisdiction property matters?
• Are there sectors or jurisdictions the group treats as out of scope, requiring specialist counsel?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: jurisdiction not yet specified].

Stage 2 — Client and Team Context

Ask the interviewee:

• Does the group represent primarily owners, tenants, lenders, developers, REITs, or a mix?
• What types of real-estate matters does the group handle most frequently — acquisitions and dispositions, leasing, development, financing, title resolution, environmental, zoning?
• How is the team structured — partners, associates, paralegals, title specialists, surveyors?
• Are there asset types (multifamily, office, industrial, retail, hospitality, mixed-use) that require special handling?
• How does the group coordinate with title insurance, lenders, environmental consultants, and zoning counsel?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: client/team context not yet specified].

Stage 3 — Escalation Thresholds

Ask the interviewee:

• Which findings automatically require escalation — title defect (encumbrance, easement, lien), zoning non-conformity, environmental issue (CERCLA, state superfund, brownfield), historic-preservation issue?
• Are there deal-value thresholds that trigger escalation?
• When does a rent-control / RSO question or a fair-housing question require immediate specialist involvement?
• Which lender-required deliverables (SNDA, estoppel, non-disturbance) require partner-level review regardless of stage?
• Who is the designated escalation contact for real-estate matters, and what is the expected turnaround?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: escalation threshold not yet specified].

Stage 4 — Preferred Output Style

Ask the interviewee:

• Should real-estate work product default to issue-list format, redline format, closing-checklist format, or narrative memo?
• What level of detail does the practice group expect for diligence reports — executive summary, full issue analysis, both layered?
• Are there house style rules for risk ratings, deal-breaker flags, or open-items lists in real-estate work product?
• Does the group produce lease abstracts, title-objection letters, or closing memos in a standard format?
• Are there particular deliverable types — title objections, estoppel certificates, environmental memos — for which the group has mandatory format requirements?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: output style preference not yet specified].

Stage 5 — Source-of-Truth Documents

Ask the interviewee:

• What is the group's authoritative lease-template library, and where is it stored?
• Is there a closing-checklist template, and how is it tailored by asset class or jurisdiction?
• What document governs the group's title-objection or title-objection-letter framework?
• Are there environmental-review checklists or guidance the group treats as authoritative?
• Does the group maintain a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction reference on transfer taxes, recording requirements, and local-rule peculiarities?

Record answers and document names. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: source document not yet identified].

Stage 6 — Standard Positions and Playbooks

Ask the interviewee:

• What is the group's default SNDA posture — required, preferred, negotiable?
• What is the group's default estoppel content — minimum content, expanded content?
• What is the group's default position on lender approval rights, particularly for transfers and leasing decisions?
• What is the group's default position on permitted-use carveouts, exclusive-use clauses, and radius restrictions?
• What is the group's default lien-priority posture and approach to subordination?
• What is the group's default approach to environmental reps and indemnities?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: standard position not yet specified].

Stage 7 — Attorney Review Requirements

Ask the interviewee:

• At what stage does attorney review of real-estate work product become mandatory — initial diligence summary, LOI, definitive agreement, closing certificates, post-closing matters?
• Are there work-product types for which attorney review is always required regardless of size — any deed, any lease above a threshold, any title-objection letter, any environmental memo?
• What is the designated reviewer's role — handling attorney, supervising attorney, partner, general counsel?
• What is the expected turnaround for definitive-agreement and lease review, and how are urgent reviews (closing-day issues, title-clearance pressures) handled?
• Is there a formal sign-off step before closing, before recording, or before delivering any closing certificate?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: review requirement not yet specified].

Stage 8 — Prohibited Assumptions

Ask the interviewee:

• Are there facts agents must never assume without explicit confirmation — that title is clean, that zoning is conforming, that no environmental issues exist, that lender consent is given, that no easements affect use?
• Are there real-estate risks — environmental, title, zoning, rent-control, fair-housing — where an agent must stop and escalate rather than reason through independently?
• Are there matter types where agents must never proceed beyond intake without direct attorney involvement — environmental contamination, title disputes, zoning variance applications?
• Are there prior incidents — failed closings, title disputes, environmental claims — that should be encoded as explicit prohibitions for agents working on real-estate matters?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: prohibited assumption not yet specified].

Stage 9 — Assemble the Draft Profile

Compile all answers into a filled draft of practice-profiles/real-estate.md, populating each of the eight profile sections. For every item that was not answered, insert a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder with enough context for the reviewer to understand what needs to be supplied. Append a list of all open placeholders so the reviewing attorney can see at a glance what remains unresolved.

Output Format

Deliver:

1. Filled draft of practice-profiles/real-estate.md — all eight sections populated with answers from the interview. Every unanswered item is a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder.
2. Open-items list — an explicit enumeration of every placeholder inserted, with the stage and question it corresponds to, so the reviewing attorney can resolve them efficiently.

Label the entire output: Draft legal work product for attorney review. Not legal advice. This profile draft must be reviewed and approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it is relied upon.

Attorney Verification Checklist

• All eight profile sections have been reviewed by a supervising attorney or authorized practice-group representative.
• Jurisdiction coverage — including municipal regimes — is accurately recorded.
• Title, environmental, and zoning escalation triggers are accurately recorded.
• Lender-required deliverables (SNDA, estoppel, non-disturbance) defaults reflect current market practice.
• Transfer-tax, recording, and filing deadlines are marked [deadline verification required] in any related deliverable.
• Environmental-risk posture is current and tied to applicable CERCLA / state superfund / brownfield frameworks [Verify current law].
• No client-specific facts, matter identifiers, or privileged details appear in the profile.
• All [CONFIRM: ...] placeholders have been resolved or explicitly accepted as pending.
• The approved profile has been saved to practice-profiles/real-estate.md and its effective date recorded.
• A process for periodic profile review and update has been identified.