Prompt engineering and best practices

How to use AI for lawyers – A casepal guide

03/09/2024

Author: Kriton Papastergiou

The following guide outlines five best practices for getting better results using casepal for legal work. The strategies provided below should be used in conjunction with each other, and they can further be helpful for lawyers using LLMs in general.
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‍1. Be clear and direct
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‍When working with chat, think of casepal as an intelligent yet very new trainee lawyer who needs instructions. Casepal is heavily trained to follow the legal methodology and be relevant for legal work; still, the more precisely you explain your intended outcome, the better casepal’s assistance will be.
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‍Example
‍Clear and Direct Prompt:
"Draft an email response to client X about his wrongful termination inquiry. Include:
‍1. Acknowledgment of his email.
‍2. Brief summary of wrongful termination law in [state].
‍3. Initial assessment of his case based on facts provided.
‍4. Two questions we need answered to better evaluate his claim.
‍5. Next steps if he wants to proceed.
Keep it under three paragraphs and maintain a professional tone."

Vague Prompt: "Write an email about wrongful termination."

‍2. Be specific
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‍As Louis Litt from Suits famously said: “The rules dictate you must be precise as the law is a very precise endeavor.” Casepal helps in legal work; thus, the more precise your question is, the more precise casepal answer will be.
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‍Example
‍Is a contract formed?
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Better:
Is a contract between party X and party Y formed under German law?
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‍‍3. Provide the required context

Accuracy is incremental in legal work. An AI that generates fabricated facts and invented laws is more dangerous than useful. Casepal has been trained not to fabricate or invent information. However, as a trainee cannot answer a complex legal question without consulting the applicable legislation, neither casepal can. For legal questions, always contextualize casepal with the applicable legal sources using the library.

For legal questions, always contextualize casepal with the applicable legal sources using the library. The process is very simple; if a question relates to the Securities Act, you can simply drag and drop the pdf of the act in the library and then choose this library entry when you start a new chat. This way, casepal will answer by referencing the Securities Act throughout the chat, maximizing accuracy and relevancy. You can also contextualize casepal with multiple legal sources; for example, you can work on GDPR-related cases by uploading the TEU, TFEU, GDPR, and any relevant case law.
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Example: output of contextualized casepal response
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4. Split complex tasks into simpler subtasks
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‍When working on complex legal tasks with casepal, it is more effective to break them down into smaller, simpler subtasks. For example, when drafting a legal memorandum, instead of asking casepal to produce the entiredocument at once, consider dividing the task into several steps:
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1. Ask casepal to outline the key issues to be addressed in the memo.
2. Request a summary of the relevant facts for each issue.
3. Ask casepal to assist with identifying potentially relevant legislation or case law for each issue.
‍4. Have casepal apply the relevant laws to the facts for each issue.
‍5. Request a draft outline for each issue.
‍6. Finally, ask casepal to assist you in drafting the memorandum issue by issue.
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By following this step-by-step approach, you can guide casepal through the logical progression of legal analysis, review and refineeach component, and ensure more accuracy and comprehensive answers. This tactic further allows to provide additional context or make corrections at each stage.
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‍5. Verify, verify, verify!!!
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Use verification to assess the quality of casepal responses. Remember, you are the lawyer; casepal is here to help at all times, but still, it’s your tool, and you are the captain. There are two ways to verify; we recommend using both; first, manually double-check the accuracy of the response. Second, use verify. With verify, casepal can double-check whether the elements of its response can be found in legal sources, including legislation and case law, as well as academic articles. Casepal does that by searching extensive and industry-leading legal datasets and by searching Google.

Recommended reading for best practices in prompting:
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OpenAI. (n.d.). Strategy: Test changes systematically. Retrieved from https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering/strategy-test-changes-systematically
‍Anthropic. (n.d.). Prompt engineering overview. Retrieved from https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/overview
‍Google. (n.d.). Prompting strategies. Retrieved from https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/prompting-strategies