The legal profession has often been slow to embrace new technology, but ChatGPT is an innovation that lawyers can't afford to ignore.
ChatGPT offers new possibilities for modernizing law firms and raises questions about the future roles of attorneys. While some may view ChatGPT as a threat, forward-thinking legal professionals see it as an opportunity to transform their work.
Embracing this cutting-edge technology may hold the key to a more productive, profitable, and client-centric law firm.
What is ChatGPT?
If you've followed the news since late 2022, you've probably heard of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze text and generate responses to natural language prompts. The model can understand and process human language and then respond to it.
To be less technical, it's an advanced AI chatbot.
You give it a prompt, such as a question, and it responds with a human-like answer. But that description doesn't do the tool full justice. ChatGPT represents numerous possibilities for businesses, including law firms.
Since its release in November of 2022, ChatGPT has become a cultural phenomenon.
It's been a major topic in the media, and in February 2023, it became the fastest-growing consumer application in history, with over 100 million monthly users (only to be dethroned by Instagram Threads in July 2023). It took Facebook almost five years to hit the same number.
People have used ChatGPT to code entire websites, create fully functional applications, explain concept concepts, and automate tedious business tasks. And that only scratches the surface of what it can do.
In March of 2023, ChatGPT passed the Uniform Bar Exam with a combined score of 297.
Although the tool is still in its infancy, it's natural for lawyers to question the future of their roles. As ChatGPT continues to develop, it can serve as a valuable resource to enhance their practice and enable them to stay ahead in a competitive market.
Will ChatGPT Replace Lawyers?
While many are asking, "Will ChatGPT replace lawyers?" The truth is that it is less likely to replace the need for lawyers than to help lawyers become more productive. While there are unique ethical considerations involved in ChatGPT for lawyers, AI chatbots have the power to transform the way work is done. Just like the personal computer brought changes, ChatGPT will also cause shifts.
The key is learning how to use it correctly.
Learning to use this tool as an early adopter can give lawyers a leg up over their competition. Integrating ChatGPT in your law firm has implications for productivity and profitability. It also has the potential to improve the lives of the people you serve.
In terms of productivity for lawyers, ChatGPT can be a huge help.
It can do simple things like speeding up the time to respond to client emails. It can do more complex tasks, like helping you put together the first draft of a PI demand letter. With its help, you can analyze and summarize legal research that would otherwise take hours.
With this bump in productivity, you're on track to improving your law firm's profitability.
Because you can get more done with the help of AI, you can free up more time to help clients. You'll also have more time to spend on high-value tasks than on lower-value administrative work.
By serving more people more efficiently, you may improve client satisfaction. This could lead to an increase in referrals and help grow your law firm even more.
10 Use Cases for ChatGPT in a Law Firm
ChatGPT is poised to revolutionize the legal field by enhancing processes within law firms. Here are just a few ways it can streamline workflows, automate legal tasks, boost efficiency, and offer valuable insights for attorneys.
1. Legal Document Drafting
Since it is a natural language text generator, ChatGPT excels at creating long-form documents. What's more, it's great at developing documents that follow a highly structured format. This means that ChatGPT has the potential to streamline your process of drafting formal legal documents.
You can use ChatGPT to help you develop your first drafts of demand letters, non-disclosure agreements, and contracts in much less time than it would take a human lawyer to do so.
For example, here's a video from Simon Gibson showcasing how he got the tool to write an NDA.
If you watch the full video, you can also find his process for creating a contract, a demand letter, and other documents.
While he deals with UK and Australian law in this video, you can apply these principles to US law. All it takes is a well-crafted prompt to push the AI in the right direction, and you'll have a first draft. From there, you can modify the draft yourself or work with the AI to refine it.
Note that you should treat the documents ChatGPT returns to you as a first draft.
The language model can make mistakes and give you a document that is not 100% correct. A human lawyer should review and edit the AI draft before it leaves your office. But doing that is often faster than staring at a blank page and typing a draft from scratch.
Side note: ChatGPT can do more than help with drafting legal documents. It can also help you create content for your website. It's a great tool for scaling your marketing efforts when paired with someone who understands law firm SEO tactics.
2. Analyzing and Summarizing Documents
ChatGPT doesn't just generate text. It can understand the data you give it and extract the key points. This makes it an excellent candidate for summarizing lengthy documents like briefs, discovery files, deposition transcripts, and more.
Getting a summary from ChatGPT isn't hard. You just need to prompt the AI with something like “Summarize this document:” and then paste your document into the chat.
You can also ask it to provide a specific type of summary.
For instance, you could ask it to respond with the summary in a set amount of bullet points so that it's easy to digest. Or you could tell it to write a summary that is no longer than a certain number of words.
You can also ask ChatGPT to analyze a document.
For instance, you could ask it to find logical fallacies in a brief that you wrote. Or you could ask it to look for and fix grammar mistakes. Or you could give it a complex email and ask it to break it down into action items.
The biggest limiting factor with summaries and analysis using ChatGPT is the token limit.
The token limit is the maximum number of words or characters that ChatGPT can process in a single input. If your document exceeds the token limit, ChatGPT can only summarize up to that limit.
The limit on the free ChatGPT plan is 4096 tokens. GPT4, which is only available on the paid ChatGPT Plus plan, has a token limit of 8192. Newer models, such as ChatGPT Turbo and GPT4o have even higher limits with up to 128,000 tokens.
Each token corresponds to approximately 4 text characters. If you're ever concerned with token length, OpenAI has a free tokenizer tool to measure how many tokens long a given piece of text is.
3. Assisting with Legal Research
ChatGPT may also be helpful for lawyers while they are researching.
Since OpenAI trained ChatGPT on a large body of public data, it can find things like case law, court opinions, and legal precedents. The tool may also be helpful with cross-referencing and analyzing this legal research.
ChatGPT used to be unable to search the web for current data. However, as of September 2023, ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers can browse using Microsoft Bing and Google Gemini.
These advancements have opened up new possibilities for lawyers using AI to search for relevant case law, investigate the history of a given legal concept, and otherwise conduct legal research. However, in addition, there are many other legal AI tools that can accomplish this as well, so it's worth doing some research.
Additionally, a legal professional should always fact-check AI-generated content, especially when it has to do with high-stakes legal principles.
4. Transcribing Voice Notes, Videos, and More
Transcribing notes from an audio or video file may not seem like a big deal, but this may be the most impactful use case we've looked at so far.
Imagine pulling out your phone and recording yourself talking through an ongoing legal matter. A few minutes later, you'll have a complete transcript of the recording along with a bullet list summary, action items, and follow-up questions.
In the video below, productivity expert Thomas Frank walks viewers through the process of creating a transcription system. It's a little long, but it's worth bookmarking.
The best part is that you don't have to limit yourself to your own voice notes.
With a little modification, you can use any audio file. That means rich transcripts of things like depositions, firm meetings, and even podcasts you're listening to for personal development are all within reach.
5. Responding to Emails
Dealing with email can be a huge drain on a lawyer's time. ChatGPT can help with that.
Using some of the processes mentioned above, you can paste an email into ChatGPT. Then you can ask it to summarize it for you. From there, you can prompt the tool to help you draft a response to that email.
Once you've created a prompt that works for you, your time spent responding to emails may shrink.
That's only one way to use ChatGPT to help with your email, though. You can also use third-party tools to make the process even easier. In the video below, attorney Enrico Shaefer walks his viewers through his process for responding to emails with ChatGPT.
This is just a selection of the possibilities for lawyers with ChatGPT. As this tool develops and evolves, more functionality will emerge.
For now, you can combine these ideas with some key considerations to get the best results.
6. Writing FAQ Page Content
FAQ pages are one of the most underutilized SEO assets on a law firm’s website and ChatGPT makes building them fast, scalable, and targeted.
Imagine pulling together the most common questions your intake team hears every week: “How long do I have to file a claim?” “What happens if I was partially at fault?” “How much is my case worth?” Now, instead of writing the answers from scratch, you can ask ChatGPT to generate helpful, legally appropriate responses for each one.
You can also train ChatGPT to reflect your brand voice (formal, approachable, aggressive) or jurisdiction (e.g., Texas vs. New York comparative negligence laws). Want to take it further? Ask the AI to suggest follow-up questions, related subtopics, or ways to structure the page for readability and featured snippets.
The result is a robust, client-friendly resource that not only builds trust but helps your site rank for dozens of long-tail keywords. Just be sure to review every answer before publishing; accuracy and compliance still matter.
7. Generating Social Media Captions
Lawyers don’t always have time to market themselves — and when they do, writing a good caption can feel like pulling teeth. ChatGPT eliminates that friction by quickly generating scroll-stopping copy tailored for each platform.
Let’s say you just won a major settlement. You can ask ChatGPT to write three versions of a post:
- A formal caption for LinkedIn
- A short, punchy post for Instagram with emojis
- A quick X (Twitter) thread with stats, quotes, and a CTA
You can also tell ChatGPT the tone you’re going for (e.g., “authoritative and informative,” or “bold and relatable”), and it will match that style across formats.
Social media for lawyers thrives on consistency and clarity. With ChatGPT, you can plan a week’s worth of posts in a single sitting — and make sure they actually reflect the expertise and authority of your firm, without sounding stiff or generic.
8. Creating Client Intake Scripts
If your intake isn’t dialed in, you’re losing cases before they even hit your desk. ChatGPT can help you create custom scripts that ensure your intake team asks the right questions every time.
You can prompt ChatGPT to generate a script for auto accidents, slip-and-fall injuries, or any case type. It will create structured questions that gather key details like date of injury, location, insurance coverage, and treatment status. From there, you can customize tone and complexity based on whether the script is for a live agent, chatbot, or intake form.
You can even A/B test variations to see what questions lead to higher retention or faster qualification. This is especially helpful for solo firms or growing practices that want to scale without sacrificing quality or client experience. For more strategies on maximizing impact, check out our guide on Marketing ROI for Attorneys: 10 Tips.
9. Competitor Analysis
Knowing what your competitors are doing — and doing better — is key to dominating your market. ChatGPT can help with fast, structured competitor audits that would normally take hours of manual research.
This guide on competitor keyword research breaks down how to uncover and analyze what’s working for others in your space. ChatGPT can help with fast, structured competitor audits that would normally take hours of manual research
Let’s say your biggest competitor is outranking you for key personal injury terms. You can feed their blog URL into ChatGPT and ask it to summarize their tone, structure, keyword usage, and content gaps. It can highlight whether their CTAs are stronger, their topics are fresher, or their internal linking is better optimized.
From there, you can ask ChatGPT for improvement ideas:
- “How can I write a better post than this?”
- “What’s missing from this FAQ?”
- “Give me 5 new blog topics they haven’t covered.”
While tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush give you the hard data, ChatGPT gives you the qualitative analysis that turns numbers into action.
10. Brainstorming Deposition Prep Questions
Depositions are where cases can shift dramatically — and thorough prep is non-negotiable. ChatGPT can help you brainstorm targeted, insightful questions based on case facts, opposing party profiles, or previous discovery.
Let’s say you’re prepping for a deposition in a trucking accident case. You can paste your notes into ChatGPT and ask it to generate question categories: driver behavior, vehicle maintenance, company liability, and timeline inconsistencies. From there, you can request more specific follow-ups, reorder questions for flow, or even change tone based on strategy.
This is especially useful when juggling multiple cases or prepping junior attorneys. It helps ensure you cover every angle — and avoid missing key facts under pressure.
Just remember: AI should assist your prep, not replace your legal judgment. But used strategically, it can drastically reduce the time it takes to get fully prepared.
5 Sample ChatGPT Prompts for Lawyers
When you create your prompts, you can limit the possible outcomes by not asking open-ended questions. You can also give it more context on the task you are asking it to perform. That way, the tool will give you results that are closer to your expectations. Over time, you'll refine your prompts so that you'll consistently get outputs that you like.
ChatGPT’s real power lies in how you ask it to help. The right prompt can turn it from a generic text generator into a valuable legal assistant capable of producing demand letter drafts, marketing copy, and even deposition prep questions tailored to your practice.
These can help you scale your workflow, streamline communication, and generate content that moves cases and clients forward.
1. Demand Letter First Draft Prompt
Prompt:
“Act as a personal injury attorney. Draft a demand letter for a client who was rear-ended at a red light in downtown Chicago. The client suffered whiplash and a fractured wrist, missed 3 weeks of work, and incurred $18,000 in medical bills. Write in a firm but professional tone.”
What it does:
Creates a structured, persuasive first draft you can fine-tune — saving hours of writing time and giving you a consistent format across cases.
2. FAQ Page Content Prompt
Prompt:
“Write 5 FAQs (with answers) for a personal injury law firm based in Texas. Focus on car accident claims and what clients should know after an accident. Use a friendly but authoritative tone.”
What it does:
Generates SEO-friendly content for your website that answers common client questions and builds trust — ideal for capturing long-tail keywords and reducing intake friction.
3. Intake Script Creation Prompt
Prompt:
“Create a client intake script for a staff member handling calls about motorcycle accidents in Florida. The script should gather key case facts, ask about injuries, and screen for liability. Use clear, empathetic language.”
What it does:
Provides your intake team with a reliable script that captures essential information and enhances professionalism during first impressions.
4. Competitor Website Review Prompt
Prompt:
“Analyze the homepage and blog of [Competitor URL]. Summarize the tone, structure, and SEO strengths. Then recommend 3 ways a personal injury law firm could improve on this approach in their own content strategy.”
What it does:
Saves you hours of manual review and gives you actionable insights for outperforming your competition online.
5. Email Drafting for Client Check-Ins
Prompt:
“Draft a friendly email to a client following up on their physical therapy progress after a slip-and-fall case. Include a reminder to send over any new medical bills and an invitation to reach out with updates.”
What it does:
Keeps your client comms consistent, professional, and timely — all without having to write each check-in from scratch.
4 Risks of ChatGPT for Lawyers (And How to Avoid Them)
ChatGPT can be a powerful asset in your law practice but only if you use it wisely. Like any advanced tool, it comes with risks that personal injury lawyers and firm leadership can’t afford to ignore.
Here’s how to spot the landmines before you step on them and how to turn each one into a strength instead of a liability.
1. Hallucinations: AI Can Confidently Provide Wrong Answers
One of the most talked-about risks in legal AI is hallucination — when the model fabricates facts, cases, or citations that sound plausible but are completely false. This can be catastrophic in legal settings where accuracy isn’t optional.
For example, you might ask ChatGPT for supporting case law on a wrongful death claim, and it cites a federal case that doesn’t actually exist. If you trust that output and include it in a legal brief, you’re looking at potential professional discipline or worse.
How to avoid it:
Always verify AI-generated information using reliable sources like Westlaw, LexisNexis, or official court databases. Use ChatGPT for ideation or first drafts — not legal conclusions. Think of it as a sharp intern: helpful, fast, and occasionally completely wrong.
2. Data Privacy Concerns: AI Isn’t a Vault by Default
Client confidentiality is sacred. Feeding sensitive or identifiable information into a public version of ChatGPT could expose your firm to data breaches, ethics violations, or malpractice claims.
Even if you “anonymize” the details, metadata or context clues could still compromise confidentiality — especially if you’re pasting full case summaries, medical records, or email exchanges.
How to avoid it:
Use enterprise-grade or private GPTs that offer secure environments and do not retain user data. You can also redact sensitive information before inputting it or train ChatGPT on generic scenarios that mirror the real case structure without disclosing specifics.
3. Overdependence: Don’t Let It Replace Your Judgment
The speed and ease of ChatGPT can be seductive — especially when you’re swamped with deadlines. But relying on it too heavily can dull your instincts and degrade the quality of your legal work over time.
The real danger isn’t just lazy copy-paste lawyering. It’s losing touch with the strategy, nuance, and human insight that win cases and build client trust.
How to avoid it:
Use ChatGPT to accelerate first drafts or spark ideas, but always apply your own legal reasoning, review every output critically, and refine the final product with your professional insight. Your brain is the engine. ChatGPT is just the turbo.
4. Generic Output: Bad Prompts In, Bad Content Out
ChatGPT only performs as well as the prompt you give it. If you ask vague questions or give it no context, you’ll get generic, lifeless content. For legal professionals, that means cookie-cutter arguments, SEO copy that doesn’t convert, or FAQs that sound like they were written for a chatbot.
This isn’t just an aesthetic issue — generic output can erode your brand authority, lower conversion rates, and miss key legal nuances that matter in your jurisdiction.
How to avoid it:
Learn how to prompt like a pro. Include relevant legal context, tone preferences, and target audience details. Give ChatGPT examples of past content you’ve liked — or better yet, feed it transcripts, outlines, or summaries of your real work so it can match your voice and substance.
Getting the Best Results from ChatGPT for Lawyers
Before jumping headfirst into using ChatGPT, there are some limitations you should know.
ChatGPT for legal marketing is not perfect. The data that it gives you will not always be 100% accurate. When you use it, take what it tells you with a grain of salt and fact-check it. AI language models have a tendency to “hallucinate” or make things up.
That’s one of the reasons why human guidance is key to using AI tools, especially within the legal industry.
Transform Your Law Firm with ChatGPT
ChatGPT offers a unique opportunity for lawyers to modernize their practices and outpace competitors. By incorporating ChatGPT into everyday tasks, attorneys can boost productivity, profitability, and client satisfaction.
While ChatGPT has limitations, early adopters who embrace its potential can significantly enhance their legal practice.
To learn more about how AI can help lawyers, check out our guide to the topic here.
ChatGPT for Lawyers: Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best GPT-4 for lawyers?
GPT-4o via ChatGPT Plus is the best choice for most lawyers. It’s fast, handles long inputs, and supports legal drafting, summaries, and research. For firms needing data security, ChatGPT Enterprise is ideal.
Which ChatGPT model is best for law?
GPT-4o is best for legal work. It handles contracts, case summaries, and legal writing more accurately than GPT-3.5. Custom GPTs or API integrations can further tailor it for your firm.
Is Claude or ChatGPT better for lawyers?
ChatGPT is better for most legal tasks. It’s more versatile, integrates with tools, and supports faster output. Claude is better only when you need to process very large documents (e.g., full contracts).
Can ChatGPT redline a contract?
Yes, but manually. ChatGPT can suggest edits or show redline-style revisions, but it can’t edit Word docs directly. Always review AI redlines before using them in real agreements.
