Create saved prompts

Good prompts lead to better AI responses. With saved prompts, that advantage compounds. Saved prompts allow you and your team to reuse the same instructions across contracts, without rebuilding them each time. Saved prompts also serve as institutional knowledge, creating consistency across your team, even for less experienced team members. This guide walks you through what makes a saved prompt worth saving, how to structure it for consistent results, and how to build a library your whole team can rely on.

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What makes a prompt worth saving

Not every prompt belongs in your prompt library. Before saving a prompt, consider whether it has the following:

• Proven reliability. Test the prompt on at least three to five different documents before committing it to the library. One good result might be luck. Consistent results are a pattern.
• Clear purpose. Each saved prompt should solve a specific, nameable problem. If you can’t write a one-line description of when to use it, it’s probably not specific enough.
• Flexible structure. The best library prompts work across variations. Build in variables for the parts that change (document type, party role, jurisdiction) while keeping the core structure constant.

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Crafting good saved prompts

An effective saved prompt is clear, with the right amount of precision and context. For a full breakdown of the different pieces of a good prompt, and additional tips, read Anatomy of a Prompt.

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Clear task or goal

Specify a clear action you want the AI to take. Start with action verbs (identify, redline, extract, compare, draft) and be specific about scope. For example, instead of “financial terms,” you might say “payment terms only.” If there are certain items that you want the AI to focus on every time you provide this instruction, include these as well.

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Context

State the context you want to include. Include the background information—the documents, parties, laws, risk level, and more—that will help the AI understand the situation. Prompts should include these four basic pieces of context:

1. Party Position: Who are you in this deal?
2. Document Type: What kind of agreement is this?
3. Industry & Regulations: What special rules apply?
4. Risk Tolerance and Priorities: What risks are acceptable and what matters most?

When including the context, move from broader context to more specific instructions. If the context may change across different contracts, you can build in variables for the pieces that change while keeping the core prompt structure. Other layers of context that might improve results are risk tolerance, relationship history, and internal constraints. Read Context Essentials for a detailed breakdown of how to layer context, what to include, and what to avoid.

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Output

If the format of the output is important—for example, if you always want the information to be organized in a table, or you want it to identify no more than five points—specify this in the prompt.

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Prompt format

When crafting your prompt, avoid a wall of text. Keep your prompt organized with headers or lists formatting. Using consistent, clear formatting in your prompt helps the AI identify distinct instructions and key requirements. The best formatting depends on the individual prompt. You may want to split the prompt instructions into context, task, and output, or you might list step-by-step sequential instructions. Learn more about prompt formatting.

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Best practices for saved prompts

To get the best use of your prompt library, your saved prompts should be organized and developed.

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Keep the prompt library organized

Whenever a prompt is saved to your prompt library, it is available for your entire team. Make it easy to understand what a saved prompt should be used for at a glance. Every entry should include a clear name, a description of what problem it solves, and notes on when to use it. Without this context, even a great prompt becomes useless to someone who didn’t write it.

1. Prompt titles: use descriptive, actionable titles that make it clear to others how the prompt is intended to be used. You can organize your prompt titles systematically, depending on your team’s workflow, by contract type, by function, or by risk level.
2. Internal notes: add context to help team members identify when saved prompts should be used
3. Tags: add up to two relevant tags to help categorize the prompt
4. Version: When you revise a prompt significantly, note the date and what changed. This makes it easier to roll back if a new version underperforms.

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Build and develop

Invite team contributions. The prompts that emerge from real work—a tricky indemnification clause review that finally came out right, a compliance check that caught something important—are often the most valuable. Create a lightweight process for teammates to submit prompts worth sharing.

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Where to create and use prompts

Prompts can be created and saved from the LOIS for Word web app or from the Word add-in. Navigate to Prompts and then select + Add Prompt/+ New Prompt to add a new prompt. Learn more about saved prompts.