How to Use AI as a Lawyer [Classes + Advice From GCs]

To learn how to use AI as a lawyer, start with a familiar legal task you can evaluate: reviewing a contract, researching a legal question, or drafting advice for a colleague. Live classes from GC AI let you work through those assignments with experienced legal instructors, ask questions as you go, and try the techniques yourself.

Cecilia Ziniti, GC AI's co-founder and CEO, created the legal AI curriculum after a career that included three General Counsel roles and serving as the founding lawyer for Amazon Alexa.

The instructor team includes Phil Lamothe, a former General Counsel, and attorneys with experience in commercial litigation, corporate law, and in-house practice. Their lessons connect AI techniques to the decisions lawyers make every day.

GC AI is legal AI software for in-house teams, with tools for contract review, cited legal research, drafting, and reusable instructions. As of October 2026, 2,100+ legal teams trust GC AI, including Gusto, Zip, and TIME. Its Academy classes give lawyers guided practice with the techniques and features they can use in their daily work.

Start With 101: Shape the Prompt Around the Decision

When you ask a colleague to approve an agreement, they need to understand what the company is being asked to accept. One way to apply what you learn in Intro to AI for In-House Legal is to turn that agreement into a short approval email. Give AI the document, explain who will read the email, and specify the decision that person needs to make.

The same agreement could produce different emails depending on what you ask. Tell AI which party you represent, which terms need the colleague's attention, and what you want them to approve. Then check whether the draft explains those terms clearly enough for that person to decide. Level 101 covers document analysis, drafting, and cited research, with time to ask questions as you work.

CZ and Friends is GC AI's podcast, where host Cecilia Ziniti talks with legal and business leaders about scaling companies, leading teams, and putting AI to work. In her conversation with Cecilia, Holly Hogan, Deepgram's general counsel at the time, explained how lawyers' questioning skills carry over to AI:

it's really a series of asking questions and having a dialogue with the technology to come up with the information that you need.

If the first draft misses a business issue or assumes a fact you haven't supplied, ask a follow-up question and check the revised answer.

Stephanie Solera, a General Counsel, described her team's approach to prompting classes:

Cecilia Ziniti's prompting classes are required training on my team.

The examples below adapt techniques taught in GC AI classes into practice prompts. Use public, sample, or appropriately approved material, and follow your organization's rules before uploading company or client information.

Practice Reviewing a Document for a Specific Decision

A business partner asks whether a vendor agreement is ready to sign. To answer, you need to compare its terms with your company's approved positions: the terms your legal team has agreed to accept or request in this type of deal. If the agreement differs, explain what that difference means and who needs to decide whether to accept it.

Give GC AI the agreement, any relevant amendments, and those approved positions so it has both the contract and your instructions for reviewing it. In this exercise, you represent the customer. Ask for an initial list of issues to assess before anyone drafts changes.

Example prompt: vendor agreement review

Review the attached vendor agreement from our company's perspective as the customer. Apply the approved review positions I have attached. For each departure, quote the relevant contract section, explain the business consequence, and identify the decision or missing fact I need to resolve. Put the findings in a table. Ask me for missing context, and wait for my instructions before drafting changes.

GC AI's Easy Prompt expands a plain-language request into a more detailed legal prompt. Inspect the expanded instructions before sending them. Add the facts and company positions GC AI cannot infer from the agreement.

Then inspect the analysis. With Exact Quote, you can open a citation and see the quoted passage in its source document. Read the surrounding clause, definitions, and any amendment that changes its meaning. Check whether a flagged departure conflicts with your company's position and whether the proposed issue list misses something material.

Now return to your colleague's question: is the agreement ready to sign?

Once you have resolved the open questions, ask GC AI to draft a short note using your conclusions. Explain which issues need business approval, what you recommend, and who should act next. Edit the note before sending it, checking that your colleague can tell what is ready and what still needs a decision.

For additional templates to adapt, use the AI prompts for lawyers collection.

Practice Researching a Question and Checking the Answer

The same habit of asking what a colleague needs to decide applies to legal research. When a law-firm client alert arrives, you need to work out whether the development affects your company and what to do about it. Use the alert for your next practice exercise, starting with three questions:

• Which developments apply to this company?
• Which policies and facts are needed to assess their effect?
• What might need to change?

The alert gives you a starting point for research. To advise your company, you also need to check the underlying law and understand how the company operates. Those details help you decide whether the update calls for a policy change, more information from a colleague, or no action.

GC AI's Research feature searches statutes, regulations, case law, and government sources and returns cited analysis. Use it to verify the law discussed in an alert, then supply the relevant company policy and facts to assess what the development means for your organization. Specify the jurisdiction and date in your brief:

Example prompt: legal alert and company policy review

Review the attached legal alert and current company policy under the jurisdiction and date specified in my brief. Summarize the alert's legal takeaways and verify each against primary authorities. Identify which points could affect the policy, cite the relevant authority and policy text, and list facts or documents needed to assess applicability. Distinguish legal requirements from recommendations. Ask me focused questions before proposing changes, and wait for my review before drafting policy language.

Check that each cited authority exists, supports the point GC AI makes, and applies to the jurisdiction and facts. Read the relevant source in context, including any exceptions. Check for later court decisions or changes in the law that affect whether you can still rely on it.

Bring any difficulty from the exercise to a live class: did the prompt omit a fact, did the source fail to support the conclusion, or did you need a narrower question? Working through that diagnosis with an instructor gives you a method to apply when the next legal update lands.

After checking the research and deciding what it means for the company, you can ask GC AI to draft a policy change or an explanation for HR. Supply your conclusion and distinguish required changes from recommendations.

In 201, Ask Better Questions Before Drafting

A short drafting request can leave questions unanswered. In Advanced AI for In-House Legal, you practice wizard prompting: asking AI to interview you about those gaps before it writes. You answer its questions, check the instructions it has gathered, and then let it prepare a draft. This gives you a chance to clarify the assignment before reviewing pages of contract language.

For example, suppose your business team wants an influencer agreement but has supplied only a short deal description. You may still need to confirm what the influencer will deliver, when the work is due, and which company requirements apply. Give GC AI the brief and your approved template, then ask it to help you identify the missing instructions:

Example prompt: agreement drafting interview

Help me prepare a first draft of an agreement using the attached approved template and deal brief. Before drafting, interview me about missing deal terms, the parties' responsibilities, timing, company requirements, and any ambiguity in the brief. Ask a few related questions at a time. Once I have answered, summarize the agreed instructions and wait for my confirmation before drafting.

Review the questions as well as the eventual draft. AI may overlook an important issue or ask about something the template resolves. Add your own questions. For the influencer agreement, confirm the deliverables and dates with the person managing the campaign, then decide which terms belong in the agreement.

The advanced class also covers why answers can become less reliable as a conversation grows. A context window is the amount of information an AI model can work with at one time. Long chats can mix current instructions with old facts and drafts, making it harder to keep the work focused. For a complex assignment, work in stages and check each result. When the matter or question changes, start a fresh chat with the relevant documents and instructions.

Save the Instructions That Worked

Once an exercise produces work you can use, save the instructions you would want to give again. For the vendor review, that might include the issues to check, the company positions to apply, and the format for reporting findings. Keep the current deal's facts separate, and have the lawyer responsible for the process update the saved guidance when company positions change.

In GC AI's Skill Library, a skill is a saved set of instructions you can attach to a chat. That means you can give GC AI your review instructions without typing them out for every agreement. Attach the relevant skill, supply the current contract and deal facts, and refine the saved instructions as you learn what needs clarification.

KT Farley, Chief Privacy Officer, Head of Compliance, and Associate General Counsel at Helix, describes how junior teammates use a checklist prompt before her review:

The ability to create and store reusable prompts and share them across the team has completely changed the work required to review standard work. Junior teammates now run the checklist prompt first and bring me the output as the predicate for my review.

The checklist gives Farley's junior teammates a way to start the review, while she checks their findings. In your own team, use that handoff to discuss missed issues and improve the instructions for the next assignment.

Track what you correct as you practice: missing facts, unsupported conclusions, overlooked provisions, or an output that does not help the intended reader. Use that record to improve your instructions and choose what to learn next. For a broader view of these competencies, see AI skills for lawyers.

Choose Your Next Class at GC AI Academy

Choose your next class based on where you needed help in these exercises. Start with 101 if you want practice writing clear prompts, working from source documents, and checking the results. Move on to 201 if you use AI regularly and want to clarify more complex assignments before drafting or manage longer conversations. GC AI Academy also offers focused classes on Microsoft Word and contract-review playbooks, so you can keep building skills around the work on your desk.

Bring a question you can discuss using permitted materials. Watch how the instructor defines the task, selects sources, and checks the result, then try the technique yourself. Choose a class and upcoming session in GC AI Academy.