The AI Litigator’s Playbook (2025): Court‑Ready Workflows, Ethical Guardrails, and a 7‑Day Adoption Plan

Thesis. AI can compress hours of litigation work into minutes—but only if you apply it with the same discipline you bring to evidence, privilege, and certification obligations. This is a playbook for using AI safely, defensibly, and court‑ready.

1) The C.O.U.R.T. Framework

C — Confidentiality Gate

• Decide what never leaves your control (client identifiers; medical/financial records; protected discovery).
• Use enterprise or self‑hosted tools with DPAs when needed. Redact or synthesize identifiers for experimentation.
• Maintain an AI Use Log: date, task, tool, input redaction status, outputs, reviewer.

O — Outcomes First

• Define the unit of value before you prompt: e.g., “ten deposition themes with cites,” “issue‑tagged ESI with confidence scores,” “motion skeleton with controlling authorities only.”
• Add acceptance criteria: formatting, citations required, and what must not appear (no invented cases).

U — Use‑Case Mapping

• Pick narrow, repeatable tasks tied to litigation milestones (see §3).

R — Retrieval & Records

• Point models to your source of truth (case file, transcripts, exhibits). Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) beats “general chat.”
• Preserve work product: keep prompts, inputs, and outputs in your matter file for auditability.

T — Testing & Trust

• Red‑team your own outputs (see §5).
• Sample‑check citations, facts, and quotes. Use a review checklist.

2) Ethical Guardrails (fast but serious)

• Competence: ABA Model Rule 1.1 (Comment 8) expects awareness of tech benefits/risks.
• Confidentiality: ABA Model Rule 1.6—guard client information; review vendor terms and storage.
• Supervision: ABA Model Rule 5.3—treat AI vendors like non‑lawyer assistants; set policies and review outputs.
• Sanctions & Certification: FRCP 26(g) certification for discovery responses; FRCP 37(e) on ESI spoliation; ensure AI‑augmented processes don’t compromise preservation or accuracy.
• Local Orders: Some courts/judges have AI‑disclosure or citation‑verification orders—check your jurisdiction before filing.

Nothing here is legal advice; verify rules in your jurisdiction.

3) Ten Court‑Ready Workflows You Can Use Now

1. Demand / Damages Letters (PI & Civil) Feed a structured fact table (injuries, treatment dates, billed/paid, liens). Ask for a letter with a damages schedule and medical chronology. Require a citations table back to records.
2. ESI Issue‑Tagging Triage Use an LLM to classify documents by issues (liability, notice, causation, comparative fault, punitive conduct) with confidence scores and suggested custodians for deeper review.
3. Deposition Theme Builder From pleadings + key docs, generate theory‑to‑question trees: theme → chapters → exhibits → lock‑in questions → impeachment paths.
4. Bodycam / Audio Summaries (Criminal/Civil Rights) Transcribe, then ask for a timeline with speaker IDs, policy deviations, and frame‑accurate timestamps for potential impeachment clips.
5. Motion Skeletons Draft a structure only: issues, standard of review, elements, burden, and a case list with parentheticals. You fill in facts; AI proposes authorities to check.
6. Case Law Recon with Parallel Citations Require a Source Table with links/citations and direct quotes in quotation marks. Rule: no cite = no use.
7. Expert Cross Prep Feed CV, publications, reports. Ask for Daubert/Kumho challenge angles, prior exclusions, methodological gaps, and concession traps.
8. Settlement Modeling Notes Ask for risk‑weighted scenario narratives (best/base/worst), drivers, and data required to tighten ranges—then build your own spreadsheet model.
9. Jury Instruction Comparisons Compare pattern instructions to case‑specific facts; flag element coverage gaps; propose neutral language you can negotiate.
10. Chronology from Mixed PDFs Extract event → date → source → pin‑cite tables from medical/police/business records. Force a “cannot determine” bucket to avoid invented inferences.

4) The “No‑Go” List (for now)

• Unverified citations (ever).
• Original factual assertions without a source doc in your file.
• Privilege decisions delegated to a model.
• Production format decisions (FRCP 34) without human review.
• Preservation calls without counsel’s sign‑off.

5) Red‑Team Prompts to Break Your Own Draft

Use these after you have a draft to attack it:

• Adverse Authority Hunting: “List the best three cases against our position, with pin cites and why a judge could find them controlling.”
• Element Attack: “For each element, argue we fail proof; list missing exhibits and specific testimony we’d need.”
• Facts Stress‑Test: “Find every sentence that lacks a source; propose the exact exhibit/page needed or mark as speculation.”
• Rhetoric Audit: “Rewrite the intro to sound neutral and authoritative; remove rhetoric and adverbs.”
• Sanctions Risk: “Identify any risk under FRCP 11/26(g)/37(e) based on our draft and discovery record.”

6) The 7‑Day Adoption Plan

Day 1: Pick one matter; create an AI Use Log and a redaction protocol.

Day 2: Build a chronology from 50 pages of records; verify 10 random entries.

Day 3: Generate deposition themes for one witness; refine into a chaptered outline.

Day 4: Draft a motion skeleton (structure + authorities). Check every cite.

Day 5: Run red‑team prompts; revise.

Day 6: Pilot ESI issue‑tagging on 500 docs; review the top 50 for precision/recall.

Day 7: Write a one‑page policy for your practice: permitted use cases, review steps, logging, and disclosure rules.

7) Copy‑Paste Prompt Pack (starter)

CITATION-STRICT MODE
Role: Litigation associate. Task: Provide only propositions supported by the provided materials or recognized authorities.
Requirements:

• Quote any language from a source in "quotation marks" with a precise citation.
• Return a Source Table with: [#] Proposition | Source Name | Pin Cite | Direct Quote (<=25 words).
• If the source does not support a proposition, say "Not supported in record" and stop.

EVIDENCE MATRIX
Create a table with columns:
[ID] | Fact | Source Doc | Pin Cite | Witness | Impeachment Note | Weight (High/Med/Low)

DEPOSITION THEME BUILDER
From the pleadings and exhibits, derive 5–7 themes. For each theme, list:

• Chapter title
• Elements to prove
• Exhibits to lock in
• 10 funnel questions (short, leading)
• Likely evasions and follow-ups

RED-TEAM: ADVERSE AUTHORITY
List the strongest 3 cases against our position with pin cites and 1–2 sentence parentheticals on why a judge could find them controlling.

8) What’s Next (series index)

• Red‑Teaming Your Brief: 12 Adversarial Prompts that Save You in Court
• AI for ESI: Building a Defensible Issue‑Tagging Workflow (Precision/Recall in Plain English)
• Deposition Prep with AI: From Theme Trees to Impeachment Paths
• How to Verify AI Citations Without Losing a Weekend
• Settlement Modeling with AI: Turning Narratives into Numbers
• The AI Disclosure Patchwork: Judge‑by‑Judge Reality Check (and How to Comply)
• Drafting Daubert: Methodology Attacks the Right Way

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