Where AI Helps Legal Work

Start with the line, not the hype

You will have heard that AI is about to change legal practice. You will also have noticed that the people saying so are rarely the ones who would have to explain a defective filing to a judge, a client or a regulator.

So this course takes a narrower and more useful view. There is a line running through your working day. On one side are tasks where AI can save real time and the worst case is a clumsy sentence you fix before anyone sees it. On the other side are tasks where the worst case is a wrong statement of law, a misdescribed fact or an authority that does not exist, sitting in a document with your name on it. Everything in the next six lessons is about knowing which side of that line you are on.

The fact that draws the line is simple. A chat AI tool produces text that reads like a good answer. It does not look anything up unless it has been given a search tool and actually used it, and even then it does not reason about your client's position the way you do. It writes what plausibly comes next. Plausible and correct are separate properties, and in legal work the gap between them is where the damage happens.

Where it genuinely helps

These are language and organisation tasks. That is what the technology is actually good at.

Summarising for a first read. A long agreement, a witness statement, a set of meeting notes, correspondence running to hundreds of pages. A summary helps you find your way in and decide where to read closely. It does not replace reading the parts you rely on. Lesson two covers this in detail.

First drafts of routine documents. Covering letters, engagement letter wording you will adapt from your own precedent, a standard chaser, a file note structure. You are the author. The tool gives you something to edit rather than a blank page.

Organising facts and chronologies. Give it your own notes or a set of documents you are entitled to process, and ask for a dated chronology with a source reference against every entry. That last part matters, because it lets you check each line.

Plain-English explanations for clients. You already know what a clause does or what the next procedural step involves. Turning that into something a non-lawyer can follow without feeling talked down to is a separate skill, and AI is often good at the first draft of it.

Checklists. Closing checklists, document review checklists, intake questions, a list of things to confirm before a hearing. It is good at structure. You decide what belongs on the list.

Where it does not

Legal conclusions. Whether a clause is enforceable, whether a claim has merit, whether a limitation period has run. The tool will answer these questions fluently. It has no reliable basis for doing so, and it will not flag which parts of its answer are guesswork.

Advice. Advice applies the law to a client's specific facts and circumstances, and someone has to be answerable for it. That is you, not software.

Authorities. Cases, statutes, rules and quotations must come from primary sources you have read yourself. Lesson three explains why this is the risk that ends careers.

Anything you have not verified. If a statement of fact or law appears in your work, you should be able to say where it came from and that you checked it.

A prompt that stays on the right side

The way you frame a request decides which side of the line you land on. Compare these.

From the material below, build a chronology in date order.
For each entry give: the date, what happened in one sentence,
and the exact document and page or paragraph it comes from.
If a date is uncertain or inferred, mark it UNCERTAIN and say why.
Do not add any event that is not in the material.
Do not draw conclusions about liability or legal consequences.
[paste material you are permitted to use in this tool]

That instruction not to add events is worth including every time. Models sometimes fill gaps with things that sound likely. A source reference against every line is how you catch it.

One more habit before the next lesson: before you paste anything at all, ask whether this tool is one your firm has approved for this kind of material. Lesson four covers confidentiality properly. Until then, the safe default is that client material does not go into a tool you have not been told you may use.