10 ChatGPT Use Cases for Lawyers & Legal Teams

ChatGPT's ability to analyse and generate text-based content makes it a valuable tool for automating tasks that traditionally consume hours of manual effort.

ChatGPT offers applications across various areas of legal practice, including research, drafting, client communication, and litigation support. By leveraging these tools, legal teams can focus more on strategic decision-making.

Below, we explore key use cases, practical examples, benefits, and limitations.

1. Legal Research

ChatGPT can assist lawyers in summarising case law, statutes, and regulations while providing quick insights into legal topics. Its ability to generate concise summaries saves time and allows legal professionals to focus on interpretation and application.

Benefits

• Quickly extract key facts, legal issues, and precedents.

• Use ChatGPT to analyse statutory provisions and regulatory updates.

• Combine ChatGPT outputs with legal databases for comprehensive results.

Example Prompt: “Summarise the case Brown v. Board of Education, highlighting the key facts, issues, ruling, and precedents. Provide the output in bullet points.”

Limitations: ChatGPT’s legal research capabilities may lack jurisdiction-specific depth or access to updated case law.

2. Document Drafting

ChatGPT simplifies document drafting by generating contracts, pleadings, and letters. It can assist with creating templates or converting complex legal text into plain language for better communication.

Benefits

• Draft preliminary versions of NDAs, service agreements, or employment contracts.

• Generate clauses tailored to specific legal needs.

• Save time by automating repetitive drafting tasks.

Example Prompt: “Draft a non-disclosure agreement for mutual confidentiality, valid for two years, under UK law, with a penalty clause for breaches.”

Limitations: While ChatGPT provides solid drafts, it may lack nuances required for jurisdiction-specific clauses. Tools like Pocketlaw PLAI Assistant are better suited for complex contract templates and compliance-based drafting.

3. Contract Review

ChatGPT can identify key clauses, flag risks, and suggest changes in contracts. Its ability to parse dense legal language makes it a useful assistant during contract review processes.

Benefits

• Extract essential clauses like governing law, indemnity, and liability limits.

• Use it to check for inconsistencies and missing sections.

• Streamline the initial review process before detailed legal analysis.

Example Prompt: “Identify the governing law, liability cap, and indemnity clauses in this agreement. Summarise the terms in bullet points.”

Limitations: ChatGPT lacks full contextual understanding of contractual nuances. Specialised tools like Pocketlaw contract review tool offer deeper compliance and consistency checks, ensuring jurisdiction-specific accuracy.

4. Client Communication

Simplifying legal language and drafting clear communications for clients is another key use case for ChatGPT. It helps lawyers craft client-friendly emails, FAQs, and summaries of complex legal information.

Benefits

• Translate legal jargon into plain language for better client understanding.

• Draft concise emails summarising contracts or agreements.

• Automate common client inquiries with FAQs.

Example Prompt: “Rewrite this indemnity clause in plain English for a client unfamiliar with legal terms.”

Limitations: Oversimplification of complex clauses can lead to a loss of critical nuance. Always review AI-generated outputs to ensure accuracy and maintain professionalism.

5. Litigation Support

ChatGPT assists with litigation tasks like summarising depositions, analysing evidence, and drafting interrogatories or motions. Its ability to process large volumes of data quickly is invaluable in time-sensitive cases.

Benefits

• Generate drafts of interrogatories or motions.

• Summarise key points from depositions or testimonies.

• Save time during the discovery phase.

Example Prompt: “Summarise this deposition, focusing on inconsistencies in the witness’s testimony. Provide a clear and concise report.”

Limitations: ChatGPT struggles with nuanced legal strategy and understanding the broader implications of evidence. Rely on experienced legal professionals for final analysis.

6. Compliance and Risk Management

ChatGPT aids in analysing regulatory requirements, identifying compliance gaps, and suggesting risk mitigation strategies. Its rapid analysis capabilities help legal teams stay ahead of regulatory changes.

Benefits

• Quickly summarise new regulations and their implications.

• Identify gaps in existing policies or contracts.

• Generate compliance checklists for common scenarios.

Example Prompt: “Analyse this data-sharing agreement for GDPR compliance risks. Highlight potential gaps and provide suggestions for mitigation.”

Limitations: ChatGPT lacks access to real-time regulatory updates. Use tools like Pocketlaw for compliance checks tailored to local regulations.

7. Internal Knowledge Management

ChatGPT helps organise and summarise legal opinions, case files, and prior work. Its categorisation and summarisation capabilities improve internal knowledge sharing and accessibility.

Benefits

• Archive summaries of key cases or opinions for easy access.

• Generate quick overviews of past projects or cases.

• Assist in organising document repositories.

Example Prompt: “Summarise the key points from these case files for internal use. Categorise them based on practice area.”

Limitations: Handling large volumes of sensitive data can exceed ChatGPT’s capabilities. Secure document management systems are essential for sensitive information.

8. Legal Training and Education

Overview

ChatGPT can generate training materials, simplify complex legal topics, and support onboarding for junior legal staff. It ensures that educational content is clear and engaging.

Benefits

• Create training modules on specific legal processes.

• Simplify statutes or case law for better understanding.

• Automate FAQs for junior staff.

Example Prompt: “Create a training document for junior staff on drafting confidentiality clauses. Include examples and best practices.”

Limitations: Accuracy may vary in specialised fields. Verify educational materials with senior legal staff or experts.

9. Due Diligence Support

ChatGPT helps review large volumes of documents and flag relevant information, especially during mergers and acquisitions. Its ability to process text quickly is invaluable in due diligence processes.

Benefits

• Summarise key findings from due diligence reports.

• Flag missing or inconsistent data in contracts.

• Save time in document-heavy transactions.

Example Prompt: “Review these M&A documents and summarise any risks related to intellectual property ownership.”

Limitations: Nuanced risk assessment requires legal expertise. Combine ChatGPT outputs with thorough professional reviews.

10. Data-Driven Insights

ChatGPT extracts trends from legal data and analyses past cases or regulatory actions. These insights can guide legal strategies or operational decisions.

Benefits

• Generate reports on litigation trends.

• Analyse past regulatory actions for compliance planning.

• Create data summaries to support strategic decisions.

Example Prompt: “Analyse litigation trends in employment law over the past five years. Provide key statistics and patterns.”

Limitations: ChatGPT lacks domain-specific datasets. Legal analytics platforms may provide more robust insights for advanced use cases.

While ChatGPT enhances efficiency in legal tasks, its limitations—such as lack of real-time legal updates, jurisdiction-specific nuances, and contextual depth—can impact accuracy. For more reliable and comprehensive legal automation, tools like Pocketlaw CLM offer purpose-built solutions for contract management, compliance, and legal review, ensuring precision and minimising risk where general AI falls short.