A clear brief can help your lawyer understand the issue more quickly, scope the work accurately and focus their time on the areas where legal and commercial judgement is most valuable.
If the information is in your head, emails, notes or different conversations, AI can help you pull it together before you speak to your lawyer.
The prompt below is designed to help you organise information you already know. It isn't intended to provide legal advice or decide what the legal answer should be.
Used carefully, it should help you arrive at the conversation with the important facts and commercial priorities already mapped out – this can be particularly useful where the issue has several moving parts. If you're ready to take advice, our solicitors can then help you work through the legal position and decide what it means for your business.
Contents:
Before you use the prompt
Think carefully about the information you put into an AI tool.
Don't put previous legal advice, confidential correspondence, personal data or other sensitive material into an AI system unless you're satisfied that the particular tool is approved for that type of information and has appropriate safeguards.
You can usually prepare a useful brief using high-level information or placeholders. Genuinely anonymised information may also reduce data protection risk but be aware that simply removing somebody's name doesn't necessarily make information anonymous if they can still be identified from the remaining detail.
If your business has approved AI tools or policies governing their use, follow them. Approval of a tool doesn't necessarily mean every type of confidential or sensitive information can be entered into it, so check the rules that apply.
If you're using the prompt below, you do not need to answer every question it asks. The prompt is designed to adapt to the information you have and record genuine unknowns rather than forcing an answer.
A prompt to create a legal brief for your lawyer
Here is a prompt you can copy and paste into your AI tool of choice:
You are helping me prepare a short first-contact summary of a business legal issue to send to a lawyer.
The purpose is to give the law firm enough information to quickly understand the issue, assess what help I may need and decide the appropriate next step. This is not intended to be a complete legal brief.
Do not give me legal advice, decide what the legal answer is, draft legal clauses or invent information I haven't provided.
Start by reviewing what I tell you. Then ask me only the most important follow-up questions needed to prepare the summary.
Ask no more than six follow-up questions in total. Do not ask about information I have already provided, and do not pursue detail that can reasonably be discussed with the lawyer later.
Prioritise establishing:
1.What has happened, why I need legal help and what I want to achieve.
2.Whether anything is urgent or there are important deadlines.
3.The name of the business seeking advice and the main people or organisations involved.
4.Whether I have authority to instruct a lawyer on behalf of the business and, if not, who will approve the instruction.
5.What I need the lawyer to help me decide, understand or do.
6.My expectations around cost, including any budget, need for a fee estimate or cost constraints I already know about.
Where relevant, also establish anything else that would materially affect whether or how the lawyer could progress the enquiry. Do not ask questions simply to make the summary more comprehensive.
If I do not know something, mark it as unknown. Do not turn assumptions into facts.
Once you have enough information, produce a first-contact summary of no more than 200 words using these headings:
The issue
Briefly explain what has happened and why I am seeking help.
What I need
State the outcome I want and what I would like the lawyer to help with.
Key practical information
Include:
- any important deadline or urgency;
- the business seeking advice and other main parties involved;
- whether I have authority to instruct, or who needs to approve the instruction; and
- any budget, cost expectations or requirement for a fee estimate.
Useful information available
Briefly identify any particularly relevant documents or information I can provide.
Still to clarify
Include only significant information that is currently unknown and may affect the next step.
Keep the summary concise, factual and easy to scan. Include only information that will help the recipient assess the enquiry or decide what to do next.
Do not add legal conclusions, recommendations or facts I have not provided.
Optional: turn the summary into a concise introductory email I can send to the law firm. Use placeholders such as [CONFIDENTIAL DETAIL TO ADD] for sensitive information I should add myself rather than entering it into the AI tool.
Check the brief before you send it
Treat the AI output as a draft.
Check the names, dates, figures and sequence of events against your original information. Make sure nothing has been invented, assumed or changed and that the brief reflects what you actually want to achieve.
Add any context that may be obvious to you but won't be obvious to someone coming to the matter for the first time.
You may also decide that some sensitive information is better shared directly with your lawyer rather than included in an AI-generated brief.
Once you're happy with it, send the brief and any relevant documents to your lawyer through your usual secure channels.
A structured brief won't remove the need for your lawyer to ask questions. But it can help you get to the important questions more quickly.
Remember, you don't need to diagnose the legal issue yourself. The goal at this stage is to give your lawyer a clear picture of what has happened, what matters to the business and what you need help with.
