Using AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, can be a useful way to prepare before you speak to a lawyer.
It can help you organise information, put events into order and work out what you need help with. That can give your lawyer a clearer picture of the issue from the outset and help them focus their time on the risks, options and decisions where legal and commercial judgement is most valuable.
The key is to use AI to help prepare the brief, rather than relying on it to provide the legal answer. If you’re preparing to instruct a solicitor, a clear brief can help them get to the important issues faster and make better use of the time you’re paying for.
Contents:
- Pull the background together
- Explain what you want to achieve
- Include the people and organisations involved
- Say what you're concerned about
- Be clear about what you want your lawyer to do
- Don't let AI make a straightforward issue more complicated
- Be careful with confidential and sensitive information
- Be cautious about using AI to draft the legal solution
- If you've already used AI, tell your lawyer
- Use AI to prepare, then use your lawyer's judgement
Pull the background together
Start with what has happened.
What prompted you to seek legal advice? What conversations have already taken place? Has anything been agreed? Are there important dates or deadlines? What documents or other information will your lawyer need to see?
If the information is spread across your own notes or recollection of different conversations, AI can help you turn it into a short summary or chronology. Be more cautious about uploading emails, contracts or other source documents: first check whether the AI system is approved for that information and has appropriate safeguards.
You don't need to turn the situation into a legal analysis. A straightforward account of the facts is usually more useful.
Ask the AI to flag information that appears to be missing rather than filling in gaps or making assumptions. Keep confirmed facts, assumptions and unanswered questions distinct, and ask the AI to identify any assumptions it has made.
Always check the resulting summary yourself. Share confidential documents and supporting material with your lawyer through your usual secure channels rather than assuming they need to go through the AI tool too.
Explain what you want to achieve
Your lawyer also needs to understand where you want to get to from a business perspective.
You might need to get a customer contract signed quickly, protect important intellectual property (IP), complete an investment round by a particular date or resolve a difficult situation without damaging an important commercial relationship.
Those priorities can affect the advice you receive and the approach your lawyer recommends.
AI can help you turn your thoughts into a concise summary, but the commercial priorities need to come from you.
Include the people and organisations involved
Explain who else is part of the situation.
Depending on the matter, that could include a customer, supplier, employee, shareholder, investor, competitor or regulator. Also flag any internal decision-makers or approval requirements that could affect the timing or approach.
Your relationship with them can be just as important. Negotiating with a longstanding strategic customer may call for a different approach from dealing with a supplier you are prepared to replace.
Giving your lawyer that context helps them understand the wider commercial picture, rather than looking at the legal issue in isolation.
Say what you're concerned about
You don't need to identify the legal issue or use legal terminology before speaking to your lawyer.
Instead, explain what could cause a problem for the business.
Perhaps you can't accept unlimited liability under a contract. The timing of a transaction might be crucial. You may be concerned about losing a key employee, protecting confidential information or allowing a dispute to escalate.
It can also help to explain where you are prepared to compromise and where you aren't.
An experienced lawyer can use that information to identify the legal risks and decide where their attention is most needed.
Be clear about what you want your lawyer to do
A request to simply “take a look” at something can be difficult to scope.
Be clear about the decision you need to make and the support you want. For example, do you want a quick sense-check, a full contract review, help drafting something, support with negotiations or advice on one particular risk?
Include your deadline and, where relevant, any budget you are working to.
The clearer the instruction, the easier it is for your lawyer to understand the work involved, scope it properly and give you a more meaningful view of likely cost. It also helps you agree the right level of support at the outset.
Don't let AI make a straightforward issue more complicated
One drawback of using AI to prepare legal instructions is that a relatively simple business issue can come back sounding like a lengthy legal submission.
That rarely helps.
Read the output before sending it. Remove repetition, check the facts and strip out anything that doesn't reflect the situation as you understand it.
A short, clear brief is usually more useful than a ten-page AI-generated document.
Be careful with confidential and sensitive information
You can usually organise your thinking without putting full contracts, confidential correspondence, personal data or previous legal advice into an AI tool.
High-level or genuinely anonymised information may sometimes be enough. But removing somebody's name doesn't necessarily make information anonymous if they can still be identified from the remaining detail.
For more detail, read our guide to what information you shouldn't put into an AI tool.
Be cautious about using AI to draft the legal solution
AI can be helpful in preparing your instructions. Using it to produce a legal document or answer is a different use case.
A polished AI-generated draft may still need substantial checking if the underlying approach, assumptions or legal position are wrong.
That can shift the lawyer's time from drafting into reviewing and correcting the output, rather than reducing the work overall. For a closer look at this, read our article: Should I use AI to draft a contract?
If you've already used AI, tell your lawyer
If you have already used AI to research the issue, prepare a document or generate a draft, you don't need to hide that from your lawyer.
Share what you have done and, where useful, the prompt or instructions you gave the AI. That can help your lawyer understand how the output was produced.
Your lawyer can then decide whether the output is a helpful starting point or whether it would be quicker and safer to approach the work differently.
Use AI to prepare, then use your lawyer's judgement
Used well, AI can take some of the administration out of preparing a legal instruction.
It can help you bring the facts together, clarify your priorities and give your lawyer a better starting point.
That can mean less time establishing the basic context and more time focused on what your business actually needs: understanding the risks, considering the options and deciding what to do next.
