Disclaimer: The prompts below help you draft and review documents faster. They do not constitute legal advice, and AI output should always be checked by a qualified lawyer before it governs anything real.
AI is genuinely useful for legal drafting — it produces structured first drafts, suggests standard clauses, and rewrites dense legalese into plain English in seconds. The risk is treating its confident output as authoritative. Used as a fast drafter with a human reviewer, it is a real productivity gain. Used as the final word, it is a liability.
Drafting an NDA
A good NDA prompt names the parties, the direction (mutual or one-way), the purpose, and the jurisdiction:
“Draft a mutual non-disclosure agreement between [Party A] and [Party B] for the purpose of [evaluating a potential partnership], governed by the laws of [England and Wales]. Include definitions of confidential information, permitted disclosures, a [2-year] term, return-of-information obligations, and standard exclusions. Flag any clause that should be reviewed by a lawyer.”
Asking it to flag review points turns the model into a checklist generator as well as a drafter.
Drafting contracts and licenses
For employment contracts, service agreements, or software licenses, give the model the commercial terms and let it structure the legal scaffolding:
“Draft a software licence agreement granting [Customer] a [non-exclusive, non-transferable] licence to use [Product]. Cover scope of licence, restrictions, fees and payment terms, warranties and disclaimers, limitation of liability, term and termination, and governing law ([jurisdiction]). List the assumptions you made and any commercially sensitive choices I should confirm.”
Always have it surface assumptions — that is where it quietly invents terms you did not intend.
Drafting and structuring briefs
For a legal brief or memo, AI is strongest at structure and clarity rather than substantive legal conclusions:
“Outline a legal memo on [issue]. Provide a structure with issue, short answer, statement of facts, analysis, and conclusion. Draft the analysis section using the facts I provide, citing the type of authority that would apply but not inventing case names. Mark every place where a real citation must be verified.”
The instruction not to fabricate case names is essential — AI hallucinating citations has led to sanctioned filings.
Reviewing and simplifying
AI also reviews documents you already have: “Summarise this contract’s obligations for each party in plain English,” “Identify clauses that are unusual or unfavourable to [Party A],” or “Explain what this indemnification clause means in everyday terms.” These read-and-explain tasks are lower risk than drafting, but still demand verification before you act.
The non-negotiable rules
Three rules keep AI legal drafting safe. One: never paste real client confidential or privileged material into tools that retain or train on inputs — use zero-retention or enterprise modes, or anonymise. Two: always specify and verify the jurisdiction, because models routinely blend legal systems. Three: keep a qualified lawyer in the loop for anything binding, and ask the model to flag clauses needing professional review. Speed from AI, judgement from a human — that is the only responsible way to draft legal documents with these tools.