In December 2023 LawToolBox was the 1st legal app approved as “works with Copilot”, and the 6th overall app approved as “works with Copilot”. Copilot for Microsoft 365 went GA in January 2024.
1. General-use prompts from the Copilot Lab
- Help me prepare for my next meeting.
- What decisions were made at the meeting, and what were the suggested next steps?
- “Draft a response to this email thread with a professional tone that conveys the following points…
- Write an article on the importance of creating work/life balance.
- Change text format of all titles to 24pt Arial
- Brainstorm strategies my team can use to increase user engagement with my product.
- Summarize this page as an email.
- Suggest inexpensive ways to optimize website for organic search without using social media?”
2. Use Cases for Copilot SPECIFIC to legal
Legal professionals can use Copilot to review contracts, look for certain types of provisions, identify missing terms, provide guidance on negotiations, look for specific compliance requirements, and summarize the main points of the contract. Copilot can also be used in Microsoft Teams to suggest useful prompts or allow you to ask your own questions, such as “What are the highlights from this chat for the past 7 days” or “create a summary of the key points of this meeting.” Other legal-specific prompts might include:
- Draft a contract for a new business partnership
- Summarize the key points of this legal document
- Research and summarize the latest case law on this topic
- Create a checklist for conducting due diligence on a potential acquisition
- Draft a response to this Legal complaint
- generate a list of potential legal risks for this new project
- Create a template for a nondisclosure agreement
- summarize the key provisions of this new regulation
If you aren’t sure how to use Copilot – just ask Copilot!
3- Ask Copilot specifically invoking the LawToolBox plugin
- Search for my matters in LawToolBox (this should retrieve Jack’s matters)
- Which matters in LawToolBox is Carol working on?
- Search for Carol’s matters in LawToolBox
- Find LawToolBox matters created on [date]
- Find LawToolBox matters modified after [date]
4- If you have a case named “XYZ” then you can ask …
- Give me the status of my XYZ matter in LawToolBox
What are the deadlines in the XYZ matter in LawToolBox
5-Other related questions you can ask
Because LawToolBox creates the SharePoint and Microsoft Teams sites, and creates Team calendar and Outlook entries, Copilot can pick up a lot of extra information with LawToolBox generated matters:
- Find all the files in LawToolBox
- Can you send me a summary of the emails in the XYZ matter from this week?
- Can you summarize all the info in the XYZ Microsoft Team including emails, calendar items, chats, and documents?
- Can you send me a summary of my last meeting with Carol?
- When is the discovery cutoff date in my XYZ matter in lawtoolbox
- Find the Lawtoolbox matters modified after 2/2/2024
Even though these queries sometimes work and return valuable information, these queries don’t specially leverage the LawToolBox messaging extensions.
6 – What to check when copilot isn’t working properly
Sometimes Copilot is finicky, and in order to get proper responses you need to type “new chat” in copilot (this obviously has nothing to do with LawToolBox). Also, you need to be sure you are logged into the LawToolBox app. Also, you need to be sure the LawToolBox plugin is activated in the M365 1:1 chat.
