AI has revolutionized every aspect of legal practice, and nowhere is this transformation more evident than in pre-trial preparation. The ChatGPT o3 model is great for lawyers who want to analyze case law, predict judicial tendencies, and craft winning strategies before ever stepping into a courtroom. This advanced AI model enables legal professionals to process volumes of discovery materials in minutes rather than days, identify critical patterns in testimony that human review might overlook, and develop comprehensive response strategies to opposing counsel's potential arguments. 

This tutorial focuses on using the ChatGPT o3 model to analyze legal cases and prepare them for the court. We will demonstrate how to utilize specific prompts to effectively summarize legal texts, find precedents, draft and review a contract, draft a plea, and compile case facts from a document. 

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Summarize legal texts
• Find precedents
• Draft and/or review a contract
• Draft a plea
• Compile facts from a document

Let’s get right into it. 

Summarize legal texts

Legal terminology often creates barriers to understanding. Summarizing legal documents in plain, accessible language is essential to help understand the context and find facts that are often overlooked. With ChatGPT, you can transform complex legal language into clear, comprehensible explanations.

Critical note: Despite its capabilities, ChatGPT has important limitations. The most significant risk is mistaking AI assistance for legal expertise. Your professional judgment, critical analysis, and interpersonal abilities remain irreplaceable components of sound legal decision-making. AI serves as a tool to enhance your practice, not substitute for the specialized knowledge and nuanced understanding you bring to each case.

Use the following prompt to make legal texts legible and easy to comprehend. 

Prompt:

As a lawyer with over 50 years of experience, your task is to carefully review the provided [legal document], analyze it in depth, and produce a clear and concise summary. You should identify and explain the main points, obligations, and legal concepts contained in the document, simplifying any legal jargon or technical terms so that a layperson with no legal background can easily understand. Your summary must be brief yet comprehensive, covering all significant details, terms, conditions, and potential legal implications. In addition, you should highlight any legal risks, ambiguities, or unusual clauses that could raise concerns or lead to disputes. Present your findings in a structured and easy-to-follow format that fully captures both the core content and any areas that warrant caution.

Upload the legal document that you want help understanding. Use the attach feature of ChatGPT. 

ChatGPT created a table and showed everything clearly. That’s quite a help, especially when lawyers are under a time crunch and want to figure out the case quickly. 

Follow up by asking ChatGPT about the finer points that will help the tenant win this case. 

Prompt:

What are some of the finer points that can help the tenant refute the owner's claims and provide answers to his allegations?

Those are some solid points that the tenant can pursue to rebut the owner’s allegations and eventually win the case. 

Find precedents

Precedent research forms the backbone of legal argumentation, but traditionally demands significant time investment. This prompt accelerates your search process, enabling you to identify relevant case law that supports your legal position quickly. By efficiently surfacing applicable precedents, you can strengthen your arguments with authoritative support while reducing research hours.

Activate the search function in the chatbox and use the following prompt to locate precedents.

Prompt:

As a lawyer with 50+ years of experience practicing law, you are required to search and find case law examples related to a specific [legal case]. Utilize your extensive legal knowledge and resources to identify relevant cases that can help our team thoroughly understand and analyze the legal dispute. The case law examples should include comprehensive information, such as the parties involved, the issue at hand, the legal arguments presented, the court's decision, and the reasons for the decision. Ensure these examples are from credible sources and are related to the jurisdiction in question.

ChatGPT listed six precedents for the tenant vs owner security deposit dispute case. It summarized the details and provided a gist of all the instances in simple language. 

Draft and/or review a contract

Let’s say you want to draft a contract for the owner who wants to rent out a big storage area. Instead of researching the laws and using outdated templates, you can ask ChatGPT to draft a contract in accordance with the current rules of the state and city. 

Important note: When using AI for legal work, prioritize ethics. Always protect client confidentiality by never sharing identifying case details with ChatGPT. All data submitted to AI systems may be stored. Review all AI-generated content thoroughly before using it professionally.

Prompt:

As a lawyer with over 50 years of experience, your task is to draft a [type of contract] for a [type of client]. Use your extensive knowledge and expertise to ensure that the contract is comprehensive, fair, and legally binding according to the [ Type the name of the state or the area law where the tenant wants to rent]. The contract should protect the interests of the client, address potential risks, and adhere to all relevant legal regulations and standards. Additionally, ensure that the contract is clear and understandable, avoiding unnecessary legal jargon where possible.

That’s quite an extensive contract. Delete the unnecessary parts of the document and edit it as needed. 

To review a contract, upload a pre-existing contract, and ask ChatGPT to interpret the contents and give you a summary of precisely what the contract is about and how it benefits the persons to whom the contract is related to. 

Prompt: 

Tell me what this contract is about and how it benefits the tenant. List all the clauses related to the tenant and find any discrepancies that might affect me as a tenant.

What’s amazing is that the ChatGPT o3 model creates a table of everything, providing a detailed and comprehensive overview of what the document is about and how it can impact a tenant or the owner of the premises. 

Draft a plea

Drafting pleas demands precision, legal expertise, and persuasive skill. With ChatGPT, you can create documents that are both legally sound and compelling, enhancing your arguments while maintaining procedural compliance.

Lawyers and legal professionals know how difficult and time-consuming writing a plea is. It requires considerable mental effort to craft convincing and legally sound pleas on behalf of the defendants. Now, you can take the guesswork and the hours of toil out of plea writing and give defendants a fighting chance to get out of a complex legal battle. 

Prompt:

Can you draft a sample plea based on California law regarding a divorce where the wife seeks alimony from the husband and child support?

Compile facts from a document

Often, a court case becomes complex. There are numerous documents to review, and a human brain can only process a limited number of records at a time. It becomes cumbersome and often requires a significant amount of time to review each document, take notes, and then return to writing legal discourse about it. However, using AI, you can save yourself from hours of toiling, rustling papers, and reading lengthy documents over copious amounts of coffee and actually prepare for a case well within time. 

Use the following prompt to compile facts from a document. You can scan a document and load it into ChatGPT, or you can attach a soft copy and let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting for you. 

Prompt:

As a lawyer with 50+ years of experience practicing law, your task is to compile a list of key facts from the case file. This includes identifying and documenting the crucial details of the case, the arguments of both parties involved, and any evidence provided. The list should be comprehensive, objective, and precise, with all information being relevant to the case. This will be used to build the case strategy, so it's vital that the list is accurate and thorough. Your vast experience should be used to judge the significance and credibility of each fact. The list must be prepared keeping legal confidentiality in mind.

The way ChatGPT o3 presents the content is impressive. It creates tables for bite-sized content and provides an excellent overview of the entire case. 

That’s it for this tutorial, folks. Again, we must emphasize that this tutorial is intended solely for educational purposes. No one should ever take legal advice from AI tools. It’s directed towards legal professionals who can utilize AI to reduce time and identify caveats that they might otherwise overlook. Ask ChatGPT anything related to the cases, a plea, or any other legal proceeding. Take the advice and use your own professional judgment ( or hire a lawyer in case you’re not a legal professional) to prepare the legal documents.