You use AI in almost everything you do, so you want to know how to use AI to instruct your lawyer. We are glad that you are finding ways to leverage this technology, and we encourage you to do so. This is because, when used well, AI can help you organise your thoughts, build timelines, and clarify your requirements before instructing us.
You can use AI to generate legal instructions. Good instructions achieve good outcomes.
However, when used poorly, AI-generated instructions can have a negative effect. We have received instructions with pages of highly polished AI-generated information. In these cases, the real question is buried somewhere in the text or not included at all. This results in wasted time decoding the instruction to provide the correct advice. Not only may this delay proper advice, but it may also result in additional costs.
We know what clients want from a lawyer. This article is what we want from a client.
What is the downside of purely AI-generated instructions?
If instructions are generated by a person unskilled in law, prompts may be aimed at quickly establishing the solution to the problem instead of asking the questions that surface the real legal questions. It is well documented that AI hallucinations can lead to incorrect answers or assumptions, which leads to more time spent deciphering what is probable from what is applicable to your context. So instead of the important questions being posed, a purely AI-generated instruction may consider irrelevant “solutions” or make suggestions that don’t enable you to achieve your objectives, or give legal advice that could be wrong.
Lawyers apply judgment, experience and risk analysis to your legal question and identify the real important issues.
A well-structured instruction should lead to succinct questions and an indication of the desired outcome. It may also require background, but overburdening an instruction with volumes of background may be counterproductive. If an instruction is well structured, a good attorney will engage you for information pertinent to the outcome you want.
How to use AI to instruct a lawyer
AI is excellent at helping you prepare, provided that you understand what you need. We recommend using it to clarify what you are worried about, explore scenarios, organise your facts, and draft notes for yourself. Then distil all of that into a short, human instruction to us. To get useful output from a generative AI tool, clearly describe:
- The outcome you want to achieve and the lawyer to deliver in a simple one-sentence statement.
- The facts, like who the parties are, what happened, key dates, and relevant documents.
- The scope of what the lawyer should do and what you believe they should not spend time on.
- Constraints such as deadlines, budget or fee cap, and preferred format of the advice.
- The decision you face and what you will do with the advice.
- Your risk appetite. This can vary depending on the instruction, but as an example, in a contract review you may indicate if you want every risk flagged or only deal-breakers.
This is not the only way to generate good instructions, you can use whichever method works for you. For the reasons provided above, our experience shows that raw, unconsidered, and unedited AI output usually results in poor instructions. To avoid this, consider the AI analysis carefully, and check that it accurately reflects what you want to address.
How we handle AI-generated instructions
Where we receive an AI-generated instruction, we may ask you to send us the prompt/s you used to generate your instruction. Once we receive this, we will contact you and arrange a short meeting to ensure we understand your instruction correctly.
Send us the prompt you used so we can understand your initial thinking.
AI is an excellent tool. We also use AI and have built systems around it. We understand its efficiency gains as it has made us faster and more effective lawyers. But AI does not replace the need for judgment, nor has it made long instructions with irrelevant details more helpful. While a machine can produce unlimited text, our real value lies in understanding what is important to achieve the outcomes that you seek.
Actions you can take
- Write better instructions by defining the outcome, facts, and decisions you need to make.
- If necessary, refine your instructions by scheduling a short, complimentary call with one of our attorneys to discuss how best to describe the issues and what background is useful.
- Give context to AI-generated instructions by providing us with the prompts you used to generate it.
- Avoid unnecessary costs by reviewing AI-generated instructions and ensuring they succinctly and accurately reflect the issue and the desired outcome.
