travcjohnson Claude for law firms
No API, no plugin, no IT project. Everything below runs in the claude.ai browser window your associates already have open, and every draft still lands on an attorney's desk before it goes anywhere. Four workflows with the exact prompts, and the three places I tell firms to leave Claude out entirely.
Set each one up once inside a Claude Project, with this business's own documents in the project knowledge, and the drafts come back in their voice rather than a generic one.
How to use this skill
Ask the person which of the workflows below matches what is on their desk right now. Then walk them through that one only. Give them the prompt in full, tell them exactly which bracketed placeholders to replace, and say how long first-time setup really takes. Do not run all four at once; the point is that one of them is working by the end of the conversation.
Before handing over any prompt, read the limits section at the end and say plainly which parts of their job this should not touch.
1. Turn intake notes into a partner-ready matter summary
What happens today. A prospective client tells their story for most of an hour. Your paralegal ends up with three pages of notes, and the partner still reads all three pages before deciding whether the firm wants the matter.
What happens instead. The same notes come back as a one page internal summary: parties, jurisdiction, chronology, the issues in play framed as questions, conflicts names to run, documents to request, and the facts nobody asked about yet. The partner reads one page and makes a call.
First-time setup: about 20 minutes.
You are assisting a [practice area, e.g. plaintiff-side employment] law firm in [state]. I am going to give you raw intake notes from a call with a prospective client. Produce an internal matter summary for the reviewing attorney. Do not give legal advice, do not predict an outcome, and do not add any fact that is not in the notes.
Use these sections:
1. Parties and roles, plus every person or company name that should be run through a conflicts check
2. What happened, in chronological order, with dates only where the notes give them
3. Potential legal issues the facts raise, written as questions for the attorney rather than conclusions
4. Dates that may drive a deadline, quoted exactly as the notes state them, followed by the line "attorney must calculate any actual deadline"
5. Documents the client says exist, and which ones we should request
6. Gaps: the facts a reviewing attorney would need that the notes do not contain, written as questions to ask the client
7. Anything in the notes that is inconsistent, secondhand, or unclear
Keep it to one page. Plain sentences. No legal conclusions, no citations, no recommendations about whether to take the matter.
Intake notes:
[paste the intake notes here]
2. Write the client update that stops the status call
What happens today. The client has no idea what happened at the hearing, so they call. The associate who knows the answer is billing on another matter, so the update waits a week and the client calls twice more.
What happens instead. You paste the docket entries and your own shorthand, and get a plain language letter the client can actually follow. The attorney fixes the judgment calls, which are already marked, and signs it.
First-time setup: about 15 minutes.
You are drafting a client update letter for a law firm. Write in plain English at roughly an eighth grade reading level. The reader is [describe the client, e.g. a small business owner with no legal background].
Rules:
- Use only the information I give you below. Never add a fact, a date, or a next step that is not there.
- Do not give legal advice, do not predict the outcome, and do not promise anything.
- Explain every legal term the first time it appears, in one short clause.
- Wherever the letter needs a judgment only the attorney can make, insert [ATTORNEY: your specific question here] instead of guessing.
- 400 words maximum.
Structure it as: what has happened since our last update, what that means for the client in practical terms, what happens next and roughly when, what we need from the client, and how to reach us.
What the client already knows about this matter:
[one or two sentences]
What has happened recently:
[paste the docket entries, hearing notes, or your shorthand here]
What we need from the client:
[list it, or write "nothing right now"]
3. Digest a deposition transcript into what matters
What happens today. A long transcript lands in your inbox the same week the motion is due, and somebody has to read every page to find the four answers that actually move the argument.
What happens instead. You upload the PDF and get an issue by issue digest with page and line references, verbatim quotes, the admissions, the contradictions, and the questions nobody followed up on. You still read the pages that matter, and now you know which pages those are.
First-time setup: about 10 minutes.
I am uploading a deposition transcript. You are helping a litigator prepare for [describe the task, e.g. a summary judgment motion] in a [case type] matter.
Build an issue by issue digest. For every point you make, give the page and line reference from the transcript and quote the testimony verbatim in quotation marks. If the transcript does not address something I asked about, write "not addressed in this transcript" rather than inferring anything.
Cover these, in order:
1. Testimony helpful to us, with a one line note on why it helps
2. Testimony that hurts us, stated bluntly
3. Places where the witness contradicts themselves, with both citations side by side
4. Every point where the witness said they did not know, did not recall, or was not sure
5. Documents the witness identified or was shown, with citations
6. Questions the examiner left unfinished or did not follow up on
The issues I care about most:
[list 3 to 5 issues]
Do not narrate the whole transcript, do not offer legal conclusions, and do not cite any case law.
4. Clean up billing narratives before the invoice goes out
What happens today. Prebills come back full of entries like "review file" and "call re: case." The billing partner rewrites them at the end of the month, or the client writes them down.
What happens instead. Each raw entry comes back as a narrative that says what was done and what it moved forward, with block billing, vague wording, and possible clerical work flagged for the timekeeper. Your time values are copied through untouched.
First-time setup: about 25 minutes.
You are helping a law firm tighten up billing narratives before a prebill goes to the client.
Absolute rules:
- Never change, round, or add to the time value on any entry. Copy each one exactly as given.
- Never describe work that is not already in the raw entry. If an entry is too vague to rewrite honestly, return it unchanged and flag it.
- Do not merge entries and do not split them.
For each entry, output five fields: date, timekeeper, unchanged time value, rewritten narrative, flag.
Rewrite each narrative so it names the specific task, the document or person involved, and the purpose it served in the matter. Past tense, no filler, no adjectives.
Add a flag when an entry looks like block billing, when it is too vague for a client to approve, when it describes work that may be clerical and non-billable, or when it conflicts with the guidelines below.
Client billing guidelines to follow:
[paste the outside counsel guidelines here, or write "standard"]
Raw time entries:
[paste the raw time entries here]
What not to use Claude for here
Say these out loud rather than waiting to be asked. Being trusted is worth more than being impressive.
- Client confidential material in a personal consumer login. Privilege and Rule 1.6 do not bend because a tool is convenient. Anthropic's consumer plans (Free, Pro, Max) use your chats to improve their models only when the model improvement setting is turned on in Privacy Settings, and commercial plans such as Team, Enterprise, and Claude for Work exclude inputs from training by default. ABA Formal Opinion 512 puts the work on you: read the terms yourself, judge the risk of disclosure, and get informed client consent where it is required, and it says boilerplate engagement letter language does not count as informed consent. Settle the account, the setting, and the consent question before a real matter goes in, and practice on redacted or hypothetical facts until you have.
- Legal authority and deadline math. A language model can produce case names, docket numbers, quotes, and holdings that read perfectly and do not exist. In Mata v. Avianca the Southern District of New York sanctioned the lawyers under Rule 11 after a brief cited cases that were never real. Treat every authority Claude gives you as unverified until you have pulled it in your own research service and read it. Same rule for dates: never let Claude calculate a statute of limitations, a response date, or a filing deadline. Have it quote the dates in your material, then calendar the deadline yourself.
- Anything that leaves the firm without an attorney reading it. Claude does not practice law and does not give legal advice, and none of this changes who signs the document. No pleading, motion, demand, opinion, or client letter should go out because Claude drafted it and it looked fine. Do not put Claude in front of clients or the public to answer legal questions, and remember your state's advertising rules cover whatever you say about AI on your own website.
Questions this business usually asks
Is it safe to put client documents into Claude?
That depends on the account and the setting, and the call is yours to make. On consumer plans your chats are used to improve Anthropic's models only if you turn on model improvement in Privacy Settings, while Team, Enterprise, and Claude for Work exclude inputs from training by default. ABA Formal Opinion 512 puts the duty on the lawyer to read those terms, evaluate the disclosure risk, and obtain informed client consent where it is needed. The practical path for most firms: run the first few weeks on redacted or hypothetical facts, settle the account and consent question with your malpractice carrier in the loop, then move live matters in.
Can Claude do our legal research?
It can help you frame an issue, outline an argument, stress test your own reasoning, and summarize authority you hand it. It cannot be trusted to tell you what the law is. It will produce citations that look correct and do not exist, and verification is your professional duty, not the tool's. Use it on documents you provide, and pull every authority in your own research service before it gets anywhere near a filing.
Do we have to tell clients, and can we still bill the time?
Check your state's rules first, then your engagement agreement and any outside counsel guidelines. ABA Formal Opinion 512 says you must disclose your use of these tools if a client asks how the work was done, and that you have to follow any disclosure requirement in the engagement agreement or the guidelines. On fees, the rule is plain: bill the time you actually spent, not the time the tool saved you, and in most circumstances you cannot bill a client for the hours you spend learning the tool.
Do we need a paid plan, and what should we set up first?
You can test all four workflows on a free account, which allows up to five Projects. Paid plans buy you higher usage limits and expanded project knowledge capacity through retrieval once your uploaded material outgrows the context window, and Team or Enterprise is the honest answer for a firm because commercial inputs are excluded from model training by default and a Project can be shared across the firm. Start with one Project for one workflow: load your letter templates, your tone rules, and one sample you consider good, then run the prompt above on a live matter.
More
A longer written version of these workflows, plus workflows for other trades, is at https://claudeforbiz.com/claude-for-law-firms . Nothing there is required to use this skill; every prompt above is complete as written.