Legal ChatGPT: Tips, Prompts, and Use Cases

AI tools like ChatGPT are creating a buzz in the legal field. According to the Legal Industry Report 2024, nearly one-quarter (24%) of law firms have adopted legal-specific generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools. Survey respondents confirmed they use GAI to streamline firm processes, from drafting marketing content to finding specific statutes.

Lawyers who have opted not to use GAI cited three primary concerns: They need to learn more about the technology, they have ethical concerns, or they don’t trust AI outputs.

Those concerns are well-founded. Any software investment requires time-consuming research, comparison, and evaluation. GAI tools, being early in their lifecycles, are complex and not widely understood. They also have known risks, and not managing those risks can lead to reputation-damaging outcomes.

Still, the efficiency benefits of AI software for lawyers are compelling. GAI can free lawyers from repetitive tasks so they can focus on higher-level legal strategies. That’s an appealing value proposition, especially when the tools themselves are free or low-cost.

This guide covers the basics of ChatGPT for lawyers and speaks to the potential impact AI will have for attorneys. Read on to find out how to use ChatGPT, the risks and limitations of GAI, the tenets of good GAI prompt writing, plus sample prompts you can try right now.

How Can Lawyers Use ChatGPT: Common Use Cases

Despite its weaknesses, ChatGPT for lawyers can be a powerful resource. The key is understanding when to tap GAI’s powers and how to manage its outputs. Below are six popular ways to use ChatGPT for lawyers.

1. Creating, editing, and summarizing legal documents
2. Performing legal research and discovery
3. Transcribing voice and video recordings
4. Assisting with client communications
5. Analyzing case details and predicting outcomes
6. Drafting marketing content

What Are Some Risks and Limitations With ChatGPT?

Recognizing the capabilities of legal ChatGPT is one hurdle to realizing the technology’s benefits. Another hurdle is understanding how to manage the outputs of ChatGPT for lawyers. To do that, you must know GAI’s limitations.

AI-powered chatbots are prone to hallucinations, have trouble understanding contextual nuances of the law, and have trained-in biases. Also, ChatGPT prompts and responses are neither private nor confidential. These issues make it impossible for AI to actually replace real lawyers, or, for that matter, paralegals.

8 Steps to Creating Strong ChatGPT Prompts

You can mitigate some risks of using ChatGPT for lawyers and maximize its efficiencies by having a strict prompt-writing process in place. Incorporate the seven steps below to streamline information-gathering, minimize errors, reduce bias, and eliminate confidentiality breaches:

1. Be very specific about what output format you want
2. Give it a clear role to play
3. Provide very detailed and unambiguous context
4. Scrub prompt for confidential information
5. Assign a series of simpler tasks instead of one complex task
6. Ask follow-up questions
7. Request citations and dig into the sources
8. Evaluate and adjust the outputs before using

Sample ChatGPT Prompts for Lawyers

Below are six sample ChatGPT prompts for lawyers that incorporate the recommendations noted above.

1. Contract review: Review this legal brief for grammar, punctuation, and clarity. Potential follow-up: Review this legal brief for word choice and brevity.  
2. Contract summary: Summarize this contract into a table that outlines parties, duties, fees, deadlines, rights granted, and representations. Potential follow-up: Expand on the rights granted section.
3. Deposition summary: Act like a paralegal and summarize key points plus any inconsistencies or admissions within this deposition.
4. Contract drafting: Draft a nondisclosure clause to include in a work-for-hire agreement used for freelance graphic designers.
5. Legal research: Outline the statutes in Texas that govern workplace discrimination.
6. Analysis and strategy: Summarize legal arguments for (detailed description of the issue). Potential follow-up: Summarize the legal arguments against (detailed description of the issue).

ChatGPT for Lawyers: Maximize Your Time

ChatGPT and AI tools can automate or expedite a law firm’s most tedious tasks. You can start legal research and draft, edit, and summarize nearly any document, from a dense contract to a client email summarizing the case outcomes.

MyCase IQ is responsible GenAI embedded throughout our practice management software that offers an advanced suite of AI-powered tools designed to enhance the productivity and accuracy of legal professionals, including Intelligent Document Summary and Text Editing.

Explore how MyCase IQ can revolutionize your legal practice, or start a free 10-day trial today to see how these advanced tools can enhance your practice.