The Hardest Prompt Is the First One
Introducing Prompt Helper, now available in Alchemy.
Discovery professionals who have moved from keyword search to generative AI know the promise. Instead of constructing Boolean queries and reviewing hit lists, you ask questions and get answers.
But anyone who has worked on a new matter knows the catch. The hardest prompt is the first one. You may not yet know how to phrase what you’re after, or what’s actually in the documents you’ve loaded. The blank prompt box is staring back at you, and the first try is often a guess.
Prompt Helper is built to help with both. It takes the pressure off the blank prompt box for new users, and it gives experienced users a quick read on the collection before they commit to a line of investigation.
How it works
Tell Prompt Helper what you’re investigating in plain language. It analyzes a representative sample of your document collection and writes a short report on what it found.
The initial report for an Enron investigation, grounded in the actual documents in the collection.
The report isn’t a generic summary. In the example above, Prompt Helper has surfaced the specific SPEs involved (Chewco, JEDI, LJM, Raptors, and others), Fastow’s role in the related-party partnerships, the 3% outside-equity rule that Enron exploited, and the 2001 collapse trigger that forced the restatements. None of that came from general knowledge about Enron. It came from the documents in the collection.
From there, Prompt Helper proposes three prompts, each pointing to a different investigation.
Three prompts proposed after the report, each pointing to a different investigation.
The three are not drafts of the same question. One might give you a broad overview suitable for onboarding a team. Another might drill into the technical accounting mechanics for legal analysis. A third might structure the evidence as a timeline for litigation support. The right choice depends on what you plan to do with the answer.
Refining through conversation
If none of the three quite fits, Prompt Helper asks a few follow-up questions to sharpen the focus.
Questions from Prompt Helper with simple numbered answers.
Answer all of them, some, or none, in whatever form suits you. You can also just tell Prompt Helper how to focus the prompt on your specific interests. Either way, Prompt Helper produces a revised report and a new set of suggested prompts tuned to what you’ve told it.
[SCREENSHOT: Final suggested prompt after refinement]
A refined prompt produced after one round of conversation, ready to run.
You can keep going through as many rounds as you need. Each cycle sharpens the report, the prompts, and the questions.
See it in action
Prompt Helper is available now on the Alchemy Evaluation Site, with rollout to production environments coming with Build 148 once we complete testing.
To see how it works on a collection of your own, schedule a demo and we’ll walk you through it.
About the Author
John Tredennick (jt@merlin.tech) is CEO and Founder of Merlin Search Technologies, a company pioneering AI-powered document intelligence for legal professionals. A former trial lawyer and founder of Catalyst Repository Systems, he is recognized by the American Lawyer as a top six ediscovery pioneer and has been involved in legal technology and document review for more than 30 years.