Claude Prompts for Lawyers: Drafting, Analysis, and Review

Useful Claude prompts for lawyers specify the jurisdiction, legal question, permitted sources, and work a lawyer must verify. Treat the output as a draft or research aid, with confidentiality review before inputs and independent verification afterward. The templates below use public or invented material, rather than confidential case facts.

fenbs can retain reusable prompts and approved practice rules without holding the underlying confidential case material. For background, see what Claude is. These prompts help structure a lawyer’s work; they do not establish that a particular tool or account is appropriate for a client matter.

What boundaries should every legal prompt include?

State the governing jurisdiction, forum if relevant, question, assumed facts, and date through which law must be checked. Distinguish supplied authority from material you still need to locate. If the jurisdiction or posture is unknown, ask for the missing information before requesting a conclusion.

The ABA’s Formal Opinion 512↗ (opens in a new tab) addresses competence, confidentiality, and review when lawyers use generative AI. Check the professional rules and court requirements applicable to your work; ABA Model Rules and an ABA opinion do not by themselves establish every jurisdiction’s requirements.

• Opening prompt: Help me prepare a lawyer-reviewed draft about [narrow issue] in [jurisdiction and forum], using only the public or invented material supplied below. Identify missing jurisdictional or procedural facts before analyzing.
• Source boundary: Separate statements supported by supplied authority from research questions and assumptions. Give a source identifier and page or paragraph for each supported proposition. Do not invent quotations, citations, holdings, or procedural history.
• Output boundary: Label the result as a working draft. List the propositions, factual assumptions, and unresolved questions I must verify before relying on it.

A reusable opening is easier to inspect than a long instruction filled with impressive role descriptions. Our system prompt examples explain how to keep recurring instructions distinct from the changing inputs.

What information should stay outside these templates?

Do not paste client documents, privileged communications, settlement positions, or identifiable matter details into these examples. A changed name does not necessarily remove confidentiality concerns. Public availability also does not automatically answer every duty a lawyer owes concerning information related to a representation.

ABA Model Rule 1.6↗ (opens in a new tab) addresses protection of information relating to representation and reasonable efforts against unauthorized disclosure or access. Before any matter-specific use, complete the applicable firm review of tool terms, access, data handling, and required consent. A prompt telling a model to keep something confidential does not supply those safeguards.

Keep the reusable pattern abstract: compare two notice provisions, identify inconsistent definitions, or prepare questions for supervising counsel. Use an invented contract to test the pattern. Only move to actual material through a separately approved process, with the safeguards and professional review that process requires.

How can Claude help organize a legal research question?

Ask for a research map before asking for an answer. This gives you a list of questions to investigate in authoritative materials without inviting a plausible citation to become the foundation of the analysis. Keep discovery of an authority separate from confirming what it says.

• Research-map prompt: For this invented scenario, identify the legal issues to research in [jurisdiction]. Organize them into threshold questions, substantive elements, possible exceptions, and procedural questions. Give search concepts, not case names from memory.
• Authority-analysis prompt: Using only these supplied public opinions or statutory excerpts, make a table of proposition, exact supporting location, limitation, and possible relevance to the scenario. If the text does not resolve a point, say what remains unanswered.

Open each authority yourself, confirm the quotation and proposition in context, and check its present treatment through your normal research process. Review contrary authority and differences in facts or posture. A model’s confident summary cannot establish that a case remains good law or controls your forum.

What does a bounded drafting prompt look like?

Give the assistant the document’s purpose, audience, approved position, and parts it may change. Ask it to flag a business or legal choice instead of resolving that choice silently. A fluent draft can otherwise convert an unanswered question into what looks like an agreed term.

• Drafting prompt: Rewrite this invented clause for plain language while preserving the defined terms, stated obligations, deadlines, and exceptions. Show the proposed wording, explain each substantive change, and flag any ambiguity you cannot remove without a decision.
• Position-check prompt: Compare this working draft with the approved positions listed below. Identify additions, omissions, and wording that may change an obligation. Do not propose new terms as if they were already approved.

Compare the original and draft directly. Check cross-references, defined terms, exception placement, and who must act by when. Store the approved abstract drafting instructions in fenbs Decisions and rules, so a later session can reuse the instruction without copying the matter file.

How do you ask for a skeptical review?

Request findings tied to exact text, rather than a general quality score. Ask for the strongest alternative interpretation and the missing support. Review is more actionable when a lawyer can see the disputed sentence, the reason for concern, and the question needed to resolve it.

• Review prompt: Examine this public sample memorandum for unsupported propositions, inconsistent facts, undefined terms, and conclusions that exceed the supplied authority. For each finding, identify the passage, explain the concern, and state what source or clarification would resolve it.
• Adversarial prompt: Present the strongest reasonable counterargument using only the supplied materials. Distinguish an argument the materials support from a hypothetical objection requiring additional research. Do not manufacture adverse authority.

Then assess the findings independently. False positives can waste review time just as omissions can hide a problem. Anthropic’s hallucination guidance↗ (opens in a new tab) recommends allowing uncertainty and grounding answers in source material; those prompting choices assist review but do not replace legal verification.

How to do this with fenbs

1. Create a free account and add a project for reusable practice templates. Describe the work in general terms without naming clients or matters.
2. Save one tested prompt in Skills and prompts, including the jurisdiction fields, permitted inputs, output format, and lawyer review checklist.
3. Record the practice rules approved by the responsible person in Decisions and rules. Keep proposals open until a person decides them.
4. Connect Claude using the relevant integration guide. Ask it to read the template project context before adapting a prompt, and save the next revision step without case details.

fenbs is not a legal research database, a privileged matter repository, or a substitute for professional judgment. For templates across assistants, see AI prompts for lawyers; find more reusable formats in the AI prompts collection.