Generative AI Prompt Design and a Proactive Approach to Teaching Its Use in Legal Research

Abstract

This article provides a rationale for proactively teaching prompt design as part of legal research instruction, discusses key concepts that should be covered in such a class, and lays out a framework for designing effective prompts tailored to the legal research context. Finally, the araticle considers how this framework can be taught using an instance in which hallucinated citations were cited in court filings, and the prompts that led to those citations can be critiqued using the prompt design framework.