10 Tips to Ease into Generative AI Use for Lawyers in 2025

Word Perfect took law firms by storm. Then there was the Blackberry. Servers were the best practice until cloud storage was embraced in the last decade. Practice management software is nearly ubiquitous in the modern law firm. You always think you have the necessary tech stack, then something like generative artificial intelligence (GAI) hits and you feel back at square zero.

But you aren’t back at zero because you’ve been through changes in technology before. Granted, many of them were painful, time-consuming, and expensive. But if there is one thing you learned, it’s that the old, unsupported technology you had isn’t safe. There is another way. It’s like an endless search that will never arrive at a destination. You will just get better at adapting to change. Here are some practical tips to get started with GAI and the time savings this particular product can afford you:

1. Start cheap

Use one of the broad products that does a lot of things. You can get a free version of Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT, or Microsoft’s Copilot. Anthropic’s Claud is a favorite of lawyers. If you invest in Copilot, it’s only $30 per user per month in any 365 above Standard version. Don’t put any client data in. Don’t ask it to give you case law. They aren’t designed for that.

2. Come at it with an open mind and curiosity

Start with simple, menial tasks. It’s easier to turn over things I hate doing than things I love doing. For example, I like writing, but I hate working in Excel, so I started with charts and getting rid of equations in cells, and copying and pasting work I didn’t have time for. So, use it on the work you least enjoy first.

3. Don’t compete or try to beat the product

Many lawyers seem to have an instinct to ask it the hardest questions in the world that you can’t answer without hours of research and discard it if it answers anything wrong. Long prompts have a place, but not at the beginning of working with it. (And just a reminder: It’s a good thing it can’t answer everything right. If it did, you would be out of a job. So, think of it as a friendly colleague or springboard for ideas and get over the fact it isn’t perfect.)

4. Start asking things you know the answers to first

No cases. Low stakes. This helps with trust but also with seeing its limits. Maybe try a few products and pay attention to their tone. Play around a little.

5. Begin to evaluate it for work

GAI can get to stuff you never get to because it’s faster; maybe do some things better than you, like editing or finance, and do stuff you hate doing. Make a running list in the office. My list started something like this:

• Pull lots of emails out of text and make them ready to send out to people
• Make a chart for data and put data in the right places
• Crunch numbers to make strategic decisions
• Organize and code a spreadsheet properly
• Come up with alternate shorter titles
• Edit for spelling and grammar mistakes I can’t see in my own writing
• Find my stuff I can’t find
• Make a slide deck from a Word doc
• Make a new article from two past articles of my own

6. Learn about asking better questions

Apply the rule of 5. Don’t settle for the first answer. Read the answer and think of improvements you want, then ask it to iterate on its previous answer again and again. You are learning.

7. Make a commitment to learn a new use monthly

Some uses will be amazing. Some will be so-so. Use a journal to track progress. Make a record of all the new things you got done and how much time you save doing things with GAI. It’s good for you to see your progress, but this way everyone in your office or groups can learn from your mistakes and successes too.

8. Start a prompt bank

Copilot has a starter bank to learn from, but also think about how you get what you want out of GAI. How can you express those things in a prompt that you can use over and over again and save it for everyone to use? Train your staff and associates.

9. Reshape your habits

Ask yourself what habits you need to change to adopt this technology, and look into how you change habits. James Cleary in Atomic Habits recommends stacking habits by using the mantra framework “Before/after I (insert an established habit) I will (insert new habit).” Here, maybe it is “Before I open my email, I open my Copilot to ask it to summarize my email,” for example.

10. Trade up

Once you get good and have changed your habits, think about more expensive or customized products that fit your workflows more precisely and answer your bigger legal pain points. Think about longer prompts and more powerful uses. Start to look at the processes you love and see if you can share the burden of those also, in ways that produce better results for clients, employees, and yourself.

This is a new wave of technology that will revolutionize the way lawyers do their work. You could put your head in the sand, but it won’t stop the wave. So think about just getting a little wet to start. The water is actually quite warm.