AskLITs for law-school clinical teaching

An AskLIT is most useful in a clinic course when it gives students a place to practice, make mistakes, and reflect. It should support a clear learning objective without replacing instructor or supervisor feedback.

An effective design has four parts:

1. Learning objective
2. Curated fictional or approved source packet
3. System prompt establishing role boundaries and safety limits
4. Evaluation scenarios testing specific skills and failure modes

Ideas by clinical skill

Skill	AskLIT design	What to look for
Client interviewing	A simulated client reveals facts only when asked.	Open-ended questions, chronology, clarification, listening, and missed safety facts.
Trauma-informed communication	A role-play client responds to tone and pacing; a debrief coach identifies assumptions.	Permission before sensitive questions, respectful language, and attention to client priorities.
Intake and triage	An intake coach organizes facts into issue, urgency, safety, eligibility, and referral categories.	Missing facts, urgent risks, and appropriate escalation to a supervisor.
Issue spotting	A fictional fact pattern is paired with a short statute or case packet.	Issues tied to facts, counterarguments, and unsupported assumptions.
Legal research	A research coach works only from a limited authority packet.	Accurate source use, distinction between holding and background, and honest treatment of gaps.
Client counseling	A counselor translates options into plain language without choosing for the client.	Options, risks, benefits, uncertainty, client goals, and a check for understanding.
Case theory	A coach sorts facts into known, disputed, missing, helpful, harmful, and evidence-needed.	Fact-to-element mapping and recognition of facts requiring verification.
Drafting and review	A drafting coach reviews a fictional letter, motion outline, or form instructions.	Completeness, audience-appropriate language, procedural accuracy, and ambiguities.
Negotiation and mediation	Separate profiles simulate a client, opposing party, or mediator.	Preparation, interests versus positions, ethical boundaries, and accurate summaries.
Professional responsibility	An ethics coach presents conflicts, confidentiality, supervision, scope, and unauthorized-practice scenarios.	Issue identification, rule-to-fact reasoning, and escalation to a supervisor.
Supervisor feedback	A feedback coach applies a rubric to a fictional work product.	Specific evidence, actionable feedback, balanced strengths and weaknesses, and appropriate confidence.

Teaching patterns

Practice first, debrief second

Create two prompt profiles that share a fictional packet:

• The first plays the simulated client or other role
• The second provides coaching feedback when the student requests a debrief

Keep evaluation rubrics out of the role-play prompt until the student finishes the exercise. Have the debrief coach reference the student's conversation turns to separate missed questions from legal reasoning errors.

Separate information retrieval from counseling judgment

Use one profile to help students locate and explain authorities, and a separate profile to practice client counseling. This isolates whether difficulties stem from source retrieval, legal analysis, or communication style.

Make evaluation part of the assignment

Have students submit:

1. Learning objective and target audience
2. Inventory of approved source documents
3. System prompt including safety limits
4. Five to ten evaluation scenarios, including at least one question the packet cannot answer
5. Evaluation results CSV showing pass/fail performance
6. Short reflection on prompt iterations and observed failure modes

This transforms building an AskLIT into an inspectable design and testing exercise.

Compare prompt designs systematically

Keep the model fixed when testing prompts, and keep prompts fixed when comparing models.

Useful prompt comparisons:

• Concise direct assistant vs. Socratic coach
• General intake helper vs. trauma-informed intake coach
• Direct-answer format vs. structured checklist with referral guidance

Responsible use in clinic settings

Before deploying an AskLIT with students, clients, or the public, verify that:

• Source packets are current, approved, and free of confidential information (see Ethical guidelines and data privacy)
• An instructor or supervising attorney oversees the learning objective and scenario rubrics
• Prompts state explicit limits and escalation rules
• Test scenarios evaluate missing information, uncertainty, and safety boundaries
• Retrieved source excerpts are inspected for actual relevance
• Students understand the distinction between practice simulations and real legal casework
• Live legal work is verified against primary authorities under attorney supervision