Advanced Prompt Techniques for Legal Work

Once ICI is solid, use advanced techniques to get more reliable outputs and reduce rework.

Key takeaways

• Use persona to control tone; use constraints to control risk.
• Few-shot examples are the fastest way to improve structure.
• For legal tasks, ask for assumptions and a verification checklist.

Persona and role assignment

Example: “You are a senior employment lawyer drafting for a conservative federal judge.” Persona helps with tone, structure, and issue-spotting.

Conditional instructions (if/then logic)

If the document mentions arbitration, extract the clause and summarize: scope, seat, rules, carve-outs, and fees.

Few-shot examples

Provide a mini-example of the input and the output you want. This can dramatically improve extraction and formatting tasks.

Constraining the model to reduce hallucinations

• Tell the model to use only pasted text
• Require it to quote before it paraphrases
• Ask it to identify assumptions