AI Prompt Engineering For Lawyers: A Practical Guide

Microsoft and the Singapore Academy of Law have released a groundbreaking 15-page guide on prompt engineering for lawyers, transforming legal workflows with AI. The guide covers:
– Drafting contracts with precision
– Extracting insights from affidavits/emails
– Building litigation strategies
– Translating regulations
– Enhancing client communications

You Should Know:

Practical Prompt Engineering Steps

1. Structured Prompts

"Analyze this contract clause for ambiguities and suggest revisions based on [bash] law."

2. Contextual Queries

"Summarize key arguments from this affidavit, highlighting inconsistencies."

3. Regulation Translation

"Translate this EU GDPR clause into plain English for a client."

Linux/IT Commands for Legal Tech

Text Extraction (Linux)

pdftotext legal_doc.pdf - | grep -i "confidentiality clause"

Batch Renaming Legal Files
```
rename 's/old_case_/new_case_/' .pdf 
```

Windows PowerShell for Document Analysis

Select-String -Path ".\contracts\" -Pattern "indemnification"

Automating Legal Workflows

Use Python + NLP for contract review:

import spacy 
nlp = spacy.load("en_core_web_lg") 
doc = nlp(open("contract.txt").read()) 
print([ent.text for ent in doc.ents if ent.label_ == "LAW"])

Expected Output:

AI-generated contract drafts in minutes.

Extracted legal terms in a structured CSV:

Clause,Page,Relevance 
"Arbitration",12,High

What Undercode Say:

AI is reshaping law, but mastery requires structured prompts and tech integration. Use Linux commands (grep, pdftotext) for document parsing, PowerShell for bulk analysis, and Python for NLP-driven insights. The future of law is human-AI collaboration.