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ChatGPT and Generative AI Legal Research Guide

Communicating with ChatGPT Through Prompts

Communicating Effectively with ChatGPT

  • ChatGPT is designed to understand and respond to human natural language input, similar to communicating with a person.
  • To get the most out of ChatGPT, it's crucial to provide clear and specific questions or prompts with adequate context.
  • Like a person, ChatGPT can only generate useful responses if it fully understands the question or request.

Providing Sufficient Context

  • Giving ChatGPT more words and context in your prompt allows it to better comprehend and respond accurately.
  • Adequate information and context is key for ChatGPT to understand the prompt.
  • The more details and background you provide, the more relevant and useful ChatGPT's response will be.

How ChatGPT Generates Responses

  • ChatGPT works by predicting the next word in a sequence based on the provided prompt.
  • Longer prompts with more context give ChatGPT more information to generate precise and relevant responses.

In summary, communicating naturally but providing ample context through detailed prompts is essential for getting the most value out of ChatGPT's language abilities.

Formulating Legal Research Prompts

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Elements of a Prompt (RICE)

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Legal Research Prompt Examples

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Crafting Legal Prompts Resources

Generative AI Prompting Instructions and AI System Comparison Exercise, Sarah Gotschall (LibGuide author)

The following are some sources of suggestions for legal research/writing prompts:

AI Tools for Lawyers: A Practical Guide, Daniel Schwarcz and Jonathan H. Choi, SSRN, June 23, 2023 (108 Minnesota Law Review Headnotes (forthcoming, 2023))

This piece offers actionable and detailed advice for lawyers and law students on harnessing the power of AI large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4, Bing Chat, and Bard for legal research and writing.

Complete ChatGPT Guide for Lawyers: Top 20 Essential Prompts, Anil Tilbe, Illumination, March 3, 2023 

This article presents 20 comprehensive prompts for conducting legal research. Additionally, it includes the most crucial sub-prompts associated with each of the main 20 prompts.

ChatGPT – 50 Questions to Road Test its Legal Advice, Linklaters, December 19, 2022

This article by Linklaters compares the quality of legal advice given by ChatGPT, a new AI text generator, with that of three human lawyers. The article presents 50 questions on data protection and contract law and evaluates ChatGPT’s responses. The article concludes that ChatGPT can produce excellent but also dangerously wrong answers, and discusses the implications for the legal profession.

Streamlining the Legal Process: The Power of ChatGPT Prompts for Lawyers, LearnPrompt.org

Provides 101 examples of ChatGPT prompts that lawyers can use to streamline their legal tasks. The article covers four main categories of prompts: researching legal cases, drafting legal documents, answering client questions, and generating content for marketing and education. The article claims that ChatGPT prompts can help lawyers save time, effort, and money in their work.

How to Use ChatGPT for Legal Research, ChatGPT Prompts

Explains how ChatGPT can assist lawyers in their legal research by generating lists of relevant cases, statutes, and legal principles, as well as summaries of legal cases and research papers. The article provides several examples of ChatGPT prompts and responses for different types of legal research tasks. The article also discusses the benefits and limitations of ChatGPT for legal research.

ChatGPT - Benefits for Law Firms - Part 1 of 4 - Legal Research, Inherent, February 2023

Explores how ChatGPT can benefit law firms in various aspects of their work. The article focuses on how ChatGPT can assist lawyers with legal research by answering questions and providing relevant information quickly. The article provides several examples of ChatGPT prompts and responses for different types of legal research tasks, such as finding cases, statutes, regulations, and legal principles.

ChatGPT - Benefits for Law Firms - Part 2 of 4 - Legal Document Drafting and Review, Inherent, February 2023

Explores how ChatGPT can benefit law firms in various aspects of their work. The article focuses on how ChatGPT can assist lawyers with legal document drafting and review by generating high-quality legal documents based on user inputs. The article provides several examples of ChatGPT prompts and responses for different types of legal documents, such as contracts, agreements, forms, and letters.