AI Legal Prompting with the RAPIDD Framework

Amyli McDaniel

Lawyers are increasingly curious about AI tools like ChatGPT. Can they really help with legal work? How do you use them safely? Where do you even begin?

The truth is: the quality of what you get from AI depends entirely on how you ask. And the practice and strategy for how you ask is known as "prompting."

In February 2025, an Am Law 100 litigation team shaved three billable hours off a discovery memo simply by rewriting a single ChatGPT prompt with RAPIDD. Multiply that across daily tasks, from legal admin to legal research, document and position analysis, and you see why structured prompting is becoming a core legal skill—for every lawyer.

The Risk‑Management Lens

Lawyers can’t afford hallucinated case citations, privilege breaches, or inconsistent drafting voice. RAPIDD turns “wing‑it” prompting into a repeatable workflow that bakes in ethical guardrails and audit‑ready diligence.

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If you’re new to AI and legal tech, this is your starting point.

Why You Need a Prompting Framework

Most lawyers don’t have time to experiment with AI. They want reliable results. But general-purpose AI models aren’t trained to think like a lawyer—so a vague or casual question often leads to confusing or risky output.

A good framework brings structure to how you interact with AI. It gives you a repeatable method to:

Clarify your legal task
Guide the AI to act in the proper role needed for your task
Minimize errors, hallucinations, and irrelevant responses
Save iteration time (though iteration is always needed for any AI prompt exercise)

There are many well structured frameworks out there - find one that resonates with you and use it for all your prompts- this is how you develop strong promting skills.

Amyli McDaniel, Esq. created the RAPIDD™ Legal Prompting Framework—as a step framework method to help lawyers create smarter, safer, and more effective AI prompts.

What is the RAPIDD™ Framework?

RAPIDD is an easy-to-remember acronym that guides you through prompt creation. Each step ensures the AI understands the legal context, audience, and expected output.

Here’s a quick overview:

R — Role
Tell the AI who it should act as.
Example: “Act as a data privacy attorney with experience in U.S. and EU law.”

A — Audience
Clarify who the answer is for.
Example: “This is for a startup CEO with no legal background.”

P — Purpose
Explain what the prompt is trying to achieve.
Example: “Summarize key legal risks of launching a beta feature.”

I — Inputs
Give the AI relevant information or documents. This is the most important step to getting you the highest quality and customized responses for your needs. The more and more accurate the better.
Examples:

“Here is a redlined version of the NDA clause we want to revise.”

“Paste in this excerpt from the California Labor Code (Sections 2750.3–2750.5).”

“Include the following facts: The client is a Delaware C-Corp founded in 2021, raising a $500k SAFE at a $5M post-money cap.”

“This is a memo from our client explaining their AI product. Focus on paragraphs 3–6.”

“Add this public link to the GDPR regulation: [insert URL]. Focus on Articles 6 and 9.”

“Here is a summary of the relevant litigation history: the client was sued for trademark infringement in 2019 and settled in 2020.”

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D — Direction
Specify how the response should be delivered.
Example: “Use plain English in three bullet points.”

D — Diligence
This is the step that for iteration after the AI model generates its responses. Because of the complexity and risks of law, you should prompt the model to fact check and provide citations and resources and even challenge it on its reponses to ensure accuracy. Also, for now, best to manually confirm things (as AI is not quite a lawyer replacement and does hallucinate).
Example: “Cite any GDPR articles used and flag uncertainties.”

RAPIDD in Action

Using RAPIDD helps you turn messy questions into professional-grade prompts that deliver useful outputs—whether you’re drafting, analyzing, summarizing, or advising.

You’ll:

Get more accurate results
Customised and Tailored to support real legal tasks and needs
Reduce your editing time
Build a library of reusable legal prompts tailored to your practice

It’s a prompting method that respects your time, your judgment, and your professional responsibility.

Want to Learn More?

This article is just the introduction. There is an AI Prompting 101 for Lawyers Workshop that goes deeper into how to:

Apply RAPIDD to real legal use cases
Build your own prompt templates for your practive and style and expertise
Avoid common pitfalls with general-purpose AI tools
Create a personal prompt library that improves over time

You’ll walk away with tools to use AI more safely and powerfully in your legal practice—no tech background required. Contact Us if you want details on next Workshop.

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RAPIDD™ is a trademark of IP3 Digital.

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