Utilizing ChatGPT for Lawyers: A Comprehensive Guide

Whether you’re a fan or not, generative AI is now a major presence in many industries and is likely here to stay. Leading this charge is ChatGPT, an advanced chatbot developed by OpenAI with capabilities of processing human language to produce relevant, generally accurate answers. 

Despite being a relatively young project launched in 2022, ChatGPT is already widely used for various tasks. It is often considered useful for automating routine business processes, creating content, and even generating codes and data analyses. Companies are now prompted to adapt to the quick rise of GenAI to be ahead of the curve. 

ChatGPT, in particular, is viewed as a valuable asset across various sectors—including the legal industry. In fact, OpenAI announced in 2023 that ChatGPT-4, the chatbot’s latest iteration, passed a simulated bar exam, beating 90% of humans taking the test to become a lawyer. 

While there are concerns about whether this AI could pose a threat to legal professionals, law firms stand to gain more by leveraging the opportunities presented by ChatGPT for lawyers.

Legal ChatGPT: How Lawyers Can Benefit from GenAI

ChatGPT for lawyers is capable of streamlining internal processes and significantly reducing the time and energy involved in routine tasks, such as the following.

Replying to emails

As simple as it may seem, email communication can actually become a major time drain, especially when you’re faced with hundreds of emails. ChatGPT can assist by generating quick, well-crafted responses for you. Simply provide the text of the email you need to reply to and request it to incorporate any additional points you want to address, and ChatGPT will create a polished response, saving you valuable time and effort.

Refining notes and transcriptions

Manual audio transcription and notetaking can be tedious and time-consuming, so it’s best to enlist the help of GenAI for this administrative task. While ChatGPT itself doesn’t directly transcribe audio recordings, it can be used to refine transcripts of recordings or written notes. To transcribe your audio, opt for Whisper, another AI model developed by OpenAI, or other transcription tools like Otter.ai or Rev AI.

Writing legal documents

Drafting legal documents is one of the most compelling uses of ChatGPT for lawyers, allowing you to create contracts, wills, and business agreements with just a few prompts. While this time-saving tool can generate well-structured documents efficiently, it’s crucial to have a lawyer or paralegal review AI-generated drafts for accuracy and make any necessary revisions.

If you’re dealing with sensitive client and matter information, you might have to swap ChatGPT for a more secure tool like TimeSolv, which allows users to create custom document templates that automatically input saved information, so you don’t have to repeatedly enter the same data manually.

Reviewing documents

Even professionals aren’t exempt from the fact that legal documents can be dense and difficult to digest. If you’re in a rush to get through piles of paperwork, you can use ChatGPT to help you review a document—a brief, deposition transcript, or discovery file—without compromising important details. 

AI can summarize or analyze texts and present them in a format you can easily understand. For example, you can create a ChatGPT prompt to identify key legal risks within a contract, extract crucial information like obligations, dates, and terms, or generate summaries that communicate crucial points to your clients or partners. 

Once your document review process is successfully streamlined with AI, you’ll need a platform for safe storage and easy access. TimeSolv has secure servers that allow clients to store, file, and manage documents efficiently. You also have the option to share documents via Dropbox or NetDocuments, directly using TimeSolv’s document management solution.

Tips to Leverage ChatGPT for Your Legal Work

How can lawyers maximize the benefits of ChatGPT? Follow these best practices for optimizing your AI use in legal work.

1. Make your prompts clear and detailed.

The quality of the output you get from AI usually depends on how specific you are with your request. Vague ChatGPT prompts often lead to generic or incomplete answers. For example, instead of asking, “Summarize this contract,” a more effective prompt would be, “Summarize this contract into bullet points outlining the parties involved, key terms, deadlines, and payment obligations.”

2. Provide the necessary context.

Although ChatGPT is good at processing and generating text, it often struggles with understanding the nuances of niche concepts. It may fail to fully grasp the implications of legal doctrines or interpret complex case law correctly. 

To resolve this, be as detailed as possible when providing background information to help ChatGPT generate a more relevant and precise output. If you’re asking for a legal opinion, provide the relevant facts, jurisdiction, and any precedents that should be considered. For example, a prompt like, “Analyze the enforceability of this non-compete clause in California, considering recent case law,” will give you better results than a simple request for analysis.

Another way to improve ChatGPT’s output is by assigning it a specific role. If you’re drafting a contract, you might prompt it to “act as a contract attorney drafting a vendor agreement for a tech startup.” This helps the tool frame its responses within a particular context, leading to more tailored and useful content.

On the other hand, be wary of potentially exposing confidential data when providing context. AI platforms rely on data inputs to generate responses. However, data entered into the platform is not private, so inadvertently sharing sensitive client data to the AI could lead to breaches of confidentiality. To address this, opt to anonymize any client-specific data before inputting it into ChatGPT. Use placeholders or generic terms to maintain the confidentiality of the case details. If this proves to be difficult, switch to a more secure and dependable platform like TimeSolv.

3. Simplify complex requests into smaller queries.

Complex legal tasks are best handled by breaking them down into simpler, more manageable prompts. Instead of asking AI to draft an entire contract, you might first ask it to create a list of key clauses, then expand each clause in separate ChatGPT prompts. This approach allows you to refine each part before assembling the final document.

Follow-up questions can help you improve the quality of AI-generated output. If the initial output is too broad or technical, you can ask it to be more specific or request a more digestible version of the statements initially presented to help you hone in on the information you need.

4. Be mindful of AI-generated errors.

While ChatGPT can automate many tasks, a human eye is still required to make sure your documents remain error-free, legally sound, and relevant. 

ChatGPT is prone to having AI hallucinations, a term for false or illogical responses that AI generates and presents as fact. These hallucinations often stem from gaps in training data or programming errors and can lead to serious consequences if relied upon in legal work. A notable example occurred in 2023 when a lawyer submitted a brief containing fabricated cases generated by ChatGPT, resulting in court sanctions.

AI models can also generate biased outputs, particularly when making recommendations. This is because they are trained on vast datasets that reflect the biases present in the source material. For example, AI-generated content has been shown to reinforce gender and racial biases, which could result in unfair outcomes if not carefully monitored. 

To avoid similar issues, manually review, fact-check, and edit the information generated by ChatGPT. Consider its output as a starting point and never the final product. It also helps to view AI as a supplementary tool, which means you should maximize its use for tasks where inaccuracies are less critical, such as generating ideas, drafting routine documents, or summarizing non-legal content. For complex legal research or nuanced legal analysis, nothing beats human expertise and traditional legal research methods. 

Modernize Your Legal Practice with TimeSolv

AI has been rapidly transforming the way legal professionals work. With the fast-paced growth of ChatGPT, law firms need to embrace these changes or risk lagging behind competitors. However, if the potential risks and challenges are holding you back from using ChatGPT, there are more secure alternatives worth exploring.

For legal documentation, TimeSolv offers a promising document management solution that ensures secure storage and streamlined filing systems while integrating with efficient automation and custom template creation. Aside from these, TimeSolv can also support you with:

• Simplified Invoice Creation: Enjoy flexible templates, electronic billing, fixed-fee options, and automatic tax calculations with TimeSolv’s comprehensive invoicing software.
• Efficient Time Tracking: Monitor your workflow across any device and track billable hours seamlessly with our time-tracking feature.
• Faster Payment: Speed up payment processing with TimeSolvPay, a built-in option that tracks check and cash payments while accommodating various payment methods.