Imagine the language model is used to assist in legal document drafting. How would you ensure the prompts maintain accuracy and compliance with legal standards?

Treat the model as a drafting assistant under a lawyer's control: ground every draft in the firm's approved templates, clauses and the applicable law supplied in the prompt, forbid invented citations, make it flag uncertainty and missing information, and require qualified review before anything is used. Prompts improve accuracy, but compliance comes from the process around them.

1. Define the scope precisely Each prompt should state the jurisdiction, the governing law, the document type, the parties and their roles, and whose interests the draft protects. "Draft a mutual NDA under the law of England and Wales, for a software company sharing technical information with a potential partner" is far safer than "write an NDA".

2. Ground drafts in approved material

• Supply the firm's templates, clause library and playbook in the prompt, and instruct the model to use those clauses and adapt only the variable parts.
• Include the text of the relevant statutes or regulations when the draft must comply with them, rather than relying on the model's memory of the law, which may be outdated or wrong.

3. Forbid inventing law "Do not cite any case, statute or regulation that isn't in the provided materials. If a legal point needs authority that isn't provided, write [AUTHORITY NEEDED]." An invented citation in a filing misleads the court and harms the client, so this rule matters more than any other.

4. Make gaps visible Ask the model to list missing facts, ambiguous instructions and assumptions it made, with placeholders in square brackets rather than invented names, dates or amounts.

5. Use a structure Require a fixed structure (definitions, obligations, term, termination, liability, governing law, signatures) and have the model check the draft against a checklist of required clauses for that document type.

6. Separate drafting from reviewing A second prompt reviews the draft against the playbook: does each clause match the approved position? Are defined terms used consistently? Are there risky clauses such as unlimited liability? It lists issues for the lawyer rather than silently fixing them.

7. Keep wording precise Tell the model not to paraphrase approved clauses, to use defined terms consistently and to avoid vague words such as "reasonable" unless the template uses them.

8. Protect confidentiality Client documents may be privileged. Use a provider and contract that don't train on your data, follow the firm's data rules, and minimise personal data in prompts.

9. Keep humans accountable A qualified lawyer reviews and approves every document; the tool records which template, materials and prompt version produced each draft.

10. Test and maintain Build a test set of drafting tasks reviewed by lawyers, re-run it when prompts or models change, and update the clause library when the law changes.