Why I Started Using ChatGPT For Legal Text
The first time I opened a hundred-page contract, I swear it felt like reading ancient Latin. Every sentence had double negatives, section cross references, and long chains of commas that made no sense until you read them three times. I found myself Googling words like “heretofore” and “without prejudice to the foregoing” even though the paragraph was supposed to be about a 30-day notice. That was the moment I thought—why not try running parts of it through ChatGPT and see if it could tell me what the actual point was.
At first, I was hesitant. What if it messed up the meaning? Legal language is precise, and cutting corners could change entirely what someone is obligated to do. But simply asking ChatGPT “Can you rewrite this in plain English without changing meaning” produced something that I could at least understand enough to have a real conversation with the lawyer instead of just nodding. It was like asking a friend who took a boring class to give you cliff notes 😛
How I Set Up My Prompts For Clarity
The standard “rewrite this in plain English” prompt worked okay, but then I noticed it sometimes skipped important details. For example, if the sentence said “The license may be terminated on thirty days prior written notice but only in the event of proven breach of confidentiality obligations,” a quick simplification lost the conditional part. That’s a huge deal. So I started refining the prompts.
What worked best for me:
– Tell it to keep all conditions, time limits, or exceptions intact.
– Ask explicitly “do not shorten critical clauses.”
– Request at least two simplified versions, one shorter summary and one fuller restatement.
After a while, my standard setup was something like: “Restate this clause in plain English but include every condition, timeframe, and exception. Give me a short version and a long version.” That way I always got both a one sentence explanation and a longer paragraph with every little detail spelled out. It reminded me of when teachers made us show both “the answer” and the whole proof in math class.
The Problem Of Losing Formatting
One headache is that many documents are PDFs with weird line breaks. If you copy paste a section directly into ChatGPT, it sometimes thinks the sentence stopped early just because there’s a line break. That creates false fragments and the rewrite looks broken.
My quick fix was to paste the text first into a text editor like Notepad, remove extra returns, then feed it to ChatGPT as one clean paragraph. Otherwise I’d get rewrites like: “Tenant may terminate. Building use grant is revoked.” when the original clearly meant “Tenant may terminate the building use grant entirely if the landlord breaches terms.” A missing subject can twist the whole meaning ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Comparing Summaries With A Real Lawyer
I’m not brave enough to rely only on AI for contracts that could cost me money. So I started a little test: I’d take a tricky clause, run it through ChatGPT with my plain English prompt, then send both the original and simplified versions to my lawyer. I wanted to know—was the simplification safe?
The feedback was interesting. The lawyer said sometimes ChatGPT did better than junior paralegals at pulling out intent, other times it stripped away subtle triggers (like “upon thirty days written notice served by hand” vs “after thirty days notice”). Those details matter in lawsuits. What I learned was that ChatGPT makes me less clueless in conversations, but it doesn’t replace professional review. It basically leveled me from “lost” to “able to ask the right question.” That’s honestly a huge leap.
Building A Workflow For Bulk Clauses
I once had a service agreement with about fifty clauses. Running each one manually into ChatGPT took forever. So I whipped together a basic workflow using Zapier and Google Docs. The idea was: copy the entire doc into a Google Doc, split the text at each section heading, and then send each part to ChatGPT through a Zap. The output landed back in another column of the Google Sheet linked to it. In the end, I had two neat columns—legal text on the left, plain English on the right.
Of course it broke the first time. The Zap kept firing twice and duplicating outputs. I realized the trigger was reading “new row” events too eagerly. Once I added a filter that only triggered on fully completed rows, it stabilized. Still, even with hiccups, the workflow saved me hours. Instead of scrolling forever, I just looked column by column. Felt like making my own Rosetta Stone for contracts 🙂
Prompts That Work Best For Beginners
If someone is totally new to this, I’d recommend starting simple. Don’t ask for too much formatting or bullet points right away, or it’ll hallucinate extra stuff. Instead use:
– “Explain this contract clause like you are explaining to a college student.”
– “Rewrite this section without removing any conditions or exceptions.”
– “Summarize this in two sentences while keeping all time limits and requirements.”
Here’s a quick little table that matches the type of clause with the prompt format that works best (note this is text only, no images):
Clause type | Prompt style
Obligations | “List the must-do actions in order of occurrence”
Termination | “Rewrite clearly listing who can end it, how, and when”
Payments | “Restate in plain English but keep all amounts and due dates”
Confidentiality | “Explain what cannot be shared, with whom, and for how long”
Where To Double Check Meanings
Even with great prompts, there are terms AI explanations can’t fully collapse. Words like “indemnify” or “assignability” don’t have perfect casual synonyms. When in doubt, I usually skim a legal dictionary online. Cornell Law’s main site has a glossary that is written simply enough to fill those gaps, so pairing ChatGPT output with that glossary feels like a solid combo.
Sometimes ChatGPT will try to substitute difficult words instead of explaining them, which creates a false sense of clarity. Example: it once turned “to indemnify” into “to cover” which felt friendlier, but left out that indemnity usually means covering not just losses but also legal defense costs. That would have been a nasty surprise if I had to rely on it blindly.
Using ChatGPT With Real Contracts
After all these experiments, I don’t see this as replacing anyone’s lawyer. But I do see it as a sanity saver when you’re trying to figure out whether the 20-page appendix is about when you need insurance certificates or about data privacy rules. The difference between staring at pages of capitalized acronyms versus reading “This section just means you need to keep insurance papers updated each year” is huge. And honestly, that extra clarity means I only need a twenty minute call with the lawyer instead of an hour.
That feels like a win in terms of time, money, and brain cells 🙂
My Personal Quick Checklist
When I actually sit down with a contract now, here’s the flow I always follow:
– Copy paste into clean text to remove line breaks.
– Run each section into ChatGPT with the standard “plain English but keep all conditions” prompt.
– Request both a short and long version to compare.
– Check tricky terms like indemnify or assign against a legal glossary.
– Save outputs side by side in a sheet for easy scrolling.
If the clause still looks fuzzy even after simplification, that’s my signal to flag it for a legal review instead of guessing.
Sometimes the text already makes sense after the AI pass, but other times the pausing point is just… “ok I still don’t know whether thirty days starts when I send the letter or when they receive it” and that’s when the human lawyer gets the baton.