Giving good context · for legal and compliance professionals
Giving good context in legal and compliance work
A model has general knowledge of contract law and regulation. It has not read your negotiation playbook, your template agreements, or the current version of the rule you care about. Its training data may also predate recent amendments. Without the right material, it reviews against a generic standard and an outdated law.
Giving good context means handing the model what a new team member would need. That includes the governing law, your standard positions, the company facts, and the full rule or contract text. It also means leaving out material that could mislead, such as a superseded policy.
Where it comes up
Reviewing against your playbook
Paste the relevant playbook entries before the contract, including preferred language and approved fallbacks. A model told your position on liability caps reviews against it. A model told nothing reviews against an average.
Summarizing a regulation that changed recently
Supply the current text of the rule and its effective date. Do not rely on the model’s memory of the law, which may reflect an earlier version.
Drafting a policy for your company
Give the model the facts that shape the obligations: the countries you operate in, the data you process, the size of the business, and any existing related policies.
What it looks like at each band
E1 · Foundational
Provides the document and a short description of the task. Leaves out the jurisdiction, the company’s position, or the current rule text. Output is generic, and the cause is not yet clear to them.
E2 · Proficient
Includes the governing law, the relevant playbook positions, and the full source text. Pastes the actual regulation or clause rather than describing it. Output is recognizably specific to the company and the matter.
E3 · Distinguished
Chooses context for each task with care. Removes superseded versions and marks which facts are confirmed. Tells the model what it should not assume, such as that a clause from another agreement applies here.
E4 · Exceptional
Builds and maintains the shared material the team uses: playbooks written for AI use, current rule texts, and company fact sheets. Notices when a rule or template changes and updates the material before it produces errors.
Common mistakes
Relying on the model’s knowledge of the law
Training data has a cutoff and may not reflect recent amendments or new guidance. Supply the current text whenever the answer depends on it.
Leaving out the jurisdiction
Rules on non-competes, consumer rights, and data transfers differ between jurisdictions. A model that does not know the governing law will apply a general one.
Mixing old and new versions
Pasting a superseded template next to the current one invites the model to blend them. Give it one version and say which one it is.
A worked example
A compliance checklist for a new marketing program that will collect consumer email addresses in two countries.
Make a compliance checklist for collecting email addresses for marketing.
The model does not know which countries apply, how consent is collected, or what the company already does. It will produce a generic list drawn from whatever rules it remembers.
Draft a compliance checklist for this program. Countries: the two named below. We collect email addresses through a signup form on our website and send a monthly newsletter. Here are the relevant sections of each country’s marketing consent rules, current as of this month: [text]. Here is our existing privacy notice: [text]. For each checklist item, cite the section it comes from. Flag any point where the two countries’ rules differ.
The model has the jurisdictions, the facts of the program, the current rule text, and the existing notice. Every item traces to a section, so a reviewer can verify it.
The full study guide for this skill, for every role, is Giving good context. The other five skills for legal and compliance professionals are on the AI skills for legal and compliance professionals page. A one-page summary is in the AI context checklist.
See where you stand
The free check grades giving good context and the other five skills in about fifteen minutes. Nobody sees the grade but you.
Then build the skills and prove it. The three steps for legal and compliance professionals list the courses and templates that fit the work.