1. The Scenario
You represent a small business owner in a breach of contract dispute. The opposing party filed a motion for summary judgment, and the court issued a mixed ruling: granting partial summary judgment on the counterclaim but denying it on your client's main claim. The case will proceed to trial on the surviving claims.
Your client is not a lawyer. She needs to understand what happened, what it means for her case, what the next steps are, and what decisions she needs to make. She has been anxious about this ruling and has emailed you twice asking for an update. You need to send her a clear, informative email today.
Key details:
- Mixed summary judgment ruling — partial win, partial loss
- Client's main breach of contract claim survives (goes to trial)
- Defendant's counterclaim for unjust enrichment granted ($28,000)
- Trial date set for September 15
- Client needs to decide whether to appeal the partial ruling or proceed to trial
- Client is a non-lawyer small business owner; prefers plain language
2. The Traditional Approach
Drafting client communications is deceptively time-consuming. It requires translating legal concepts into plain language while being accurate, complete, and sensitive to the client's emotional state.
Analyze the ruling and identify key points (15-20 min)
Reread the court's order and identify what your client needs to know: what was decided, what survives, what the practical impact is, and what decisions need to be made.
Draft the email (30-45 min)
Write a clear explanation in plain language. Avoid legal jargon. Explain both the good news and the bad news honestly. Include next steps and a call to action for the client.
Tone calibration and simplification (15-20 min)
Reread from the client's perspective. Remove jargon you may have missed. Ensure the tone is appropriate — reassuring without being misleading, honest without being alarming. Lawyers often underestimate how much legal-speak creeps into their "plain language" drafts.
Traditional Time Estimate
1-1.5 hours of attorney time for a well-crafted, client-friendly status email.
3. The AI-Assisted Approach
Client communication is one of the easiest and most immediately rewarding uses of AI in legal practice. The AI excels at simplifying complex information and adjusting tone — exactly what this task requires.
Feed the AI the Legal Context (3 min)
Provide the key facts of the ruling in your own words (or upload the order, with confidential details redacted). The prompt below includes guidance on audience, tone, and structure.
Run the Prompt and Review (5 min)
The AI will produce a complete email draft. Read it for accuracy, tone, and completeness. Adjust as needed — ask the AI to revise specific sections: "Make the explanation of the counterclaim ruling simpler" or "Add a sentence reassuring the client about the strength of her main claim."
Personalize and Send (5-10 min)
Add personal touches that reflect your relationship with the client. Reference prior conversations. Adjust to your own writing style. Ensure the call to action is clear: does the client need to call you, make a decision, or just stay informed?
4. The Prompt
This prompt produces a ready-to-send client email. The key is specifying the client's background, the tone needed, and the level of detail. Replace the factual details with your own case specifics.
Complete Prompt — Client Status Update
You are an attorney drafting a client status update email. The client is a small business owner with no legal background. She is anxious about her case and has been waiting for this update.
CASE STATUS:
The court issued a mixed ruling on the opposing party's motion for summary judgment:
- GOOD NEWS: The motion was DENIED as to our client's main breach of contract claim ($185,000 in damages). This claim will proceed to trial. The court found there are genuine disputes of material fact that must be resolved by a jury.
- BAD NEWS: The motion was GRANTED as to the defendant's counterclaim for unjust enrichment ($28,000). The court found the undisputed facts support this claim as a matter of law.
- NET RESULT: The case proceeds to trial on September 15 on the main claim. The $28,000 counterclaim is now a judgment against our client.
- DECISION NEEDED: Client must decide whether to (a) appeal the partial ruling on the counterclaim now (which could delay the trial) or (b) proceed to trial and address it after, potentially offsetting it against a favorable verdict.
TONE AND APPROACH:
- Warm, professional, and reassuring — but honest
- Lead with the good news, then address the bad news directly
- Explain legal concepts in plain English (no jargon)
- Acknowledge the client's anxiety and the mixed nature of the result
- Be clear about next steps and what the client needs to do
- Do not overstate the strength of our position or minimize the adverse ruling
- Include a specific call to action (schedule a call to discuss options)
EMAIL REQUIREMENTS:
- Subject line that is informative but not alarming
- Professional greeting
- 4-5 short paragraphs maximum
- Clear separation between the good news and bad news sections
- A brief explanation of what "summary judgment" means in plain terms (one sentence)
- Specific next steps with dates where applicable
- Offer to answer questions and suggest a call
- Professional sign-off
IMPORTANT: Do not include specific dollar amounts in the subject line. Keep the subject line neutral enough that someone glancing at the client's screen would not learn confidential case details.Why This Prompt Works
Client profile
Specifying "small business owner with no legal background" and "anxious about her case" calibrates the AI's language level and emotional tone. The same legal update would be written very differently for a corporate general counsel.
Good news / bad news structure
Explicitly structuring the facts as good news and bad news tells the AI to organize the email in a way that is easy for the client to follow and emotionally manageable.
Confidentiality awareness
The instruction to keep the subject line neutral demonstrates attention to practical confidentiality — if the client reads email on her phone in a meeting, no one should be able to glean case details from the notification.
Ethical guardrails
"Do not overstate the strength of our position or minimize the adverse ruling" prevents the AI from being either falsely reassuring or unnecessarily alarming — both of which carry ethical implications.
5. The Review — Evaluating AI Output
Client communications go directly to the person whose trust you have earned. Review them with care.
Check Accuracy of Legal Explanations
When AI simplifies legal concepts, it sometimes oversimplifies or introduces subtle inaccuracies. Verify that the plain-language explanation of "summary judgment," the description of the ruling, and the characterization of next steps are all legally accurate. A simplified explanation that is wrong is worse than a complex explanation that is right.
Read It as Your Client
Would your client understand every sentence? Would she feel informed and supported? Would she know exactly what to do next? If any section would confuse her or cause unnecessary alarm, revise it. The goal is clarity and confidence.
Check for Inadvertent Promises
AI-drafted emails sometimes include language that could be construed as guarantees about outcomes: "we will win at trial" or "this ensures a favorable result." Remove any language that could be seen as a promise about case outcome. Clients remember what their lawyers tell them, especially in writing.
Add Your Personal Voice
The AI draft is competent but impersonal. Add a sentence that shows you know this client: a reference to a prior conversation, acknowledgment of something she mentioned, or language that reflects your working relationship. Clients can tell the difference between a form email and a personal one.
6. The Result — Time & Quality Comparison
Traditional Approach
1-1.5 hrs
Analysis, drafting, tone calibration, and plain-language simplification
AI-Assisted Approach
15-20 min
AI draft, review, personalization, and send
The Compounding Effect
A single client email taking 15 minutes instead of 60 minutes may not seem transformative. But most lawyers send client updates multiple times per week, across multiple matters. If you handle 20 active matters and send one update per week per matter, that is 80 emails per month. At 45 minutes saved per email, you recover 60 hours per month — nearly two full work weeks.
More importantly, the emails you send will be better. They will be clearer, more organized, and more client-friendly. When AI handles the first draft, your review time shifts from "writing and rewriting" to "refining and personalizing" — which produces a better product in less time.
Try Another Application
Client communication is where AI makes the biggest daily impact. Explore other applications to transform your complete workflow.
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