How to write a law firm style guide for AI drafting

What a firm style guide captures

A style guide is the written version of the corrections a senior lawyer makes in red ink. Writing it down makes review faster and keeps drafts consistent across people and tools. A useful guide covers six areas.

• Defined terms. How parties are named (Plaintiff, Ms. Rivera or "Rivera"), whether defined terms are capitalized, and where definitions sit.
• Preferred clauses and standard language. Reservation-of-rights language, the offer to confer in discovery letters, closing lines, the certificate of service.
• Caption and signature block. Courts set the floor. In federal civil practice, FRCP 10(a) requires the court's name, a title, a file number and a Rule 7(a) designation, and FRCP 11(a) requires the signer's address, email address and telephone number. Local rules may add more, such as a bar number.
• Citation format. The citation manual you follow, short forms, when to use id., pin cites, parentheticals and how you cite the record.
• Tone and structure. Argumentative headings or topic labels, the length of the introduction, first person or not, and words the firm avoids.
• Formatting. Typeface, size, spacing, margins and line numbering. Many of these are court rules, not preferences. FRAP 32, for example, sets the form of federal appellate briefs: a proportionally spaced serif face of at least 14 points (or a monospaced face of no more than 10½ characters per inch), double spacing and margins of at least one inch. State and local rules differ.

How to write one

1. Collect three or four filings the firm considers its best work of the same type.
2. List the choices they share: naming, headings, citation habits, closings.
3. Write each choice as a short rule with a one-line example.
4. Separate court-required formatting, with the rule cited, from firm preference.
5. Keep it to a page or two, date it, and name the person who maintains it.

Getting drafts closer to your style in Draftiro today

Because there is no saved style profile, style comes from what you put in the matter and what you ask for in each request.

1. Upload an exemplar. Add a prior filing or template of the same type to the matter as a document. The upload guide covers file types. Prefer a public filed version or a template with other clients' information removed, so nothing from another matter travels into this one.
2. Ask Draftiro to follow it. Name the file in your request and say what to take from it: the structure, the headings, the defined terms, the standard paragraphs.
3. Give explicit instructions. Paste the relevant rules from your style guide into the request. For example: refer to the defendant as "Acme", use numbered argumentative headings, no Latin phrases, signature block for the responsible attorney with the bar number marked for verification.
4. Revise in the draft. Drafts are editable, autosave and keep version history, so you can ask for a revision and compare versions.
5. Finish the layout in Word. Draftiro reads the text of the exemplar, not its layout, so fonts, margins, line numbering and caption styling are applied in Word. Export the draft to Word (.docx), or open it in Word with the Draftiro Word add-in, and apply your firm's Word template.

Keep exemplars short and specific. A single answer draws on the passages retrieved for that request, so a long exemplar may not be followed in full. Point to the section you want copied, or upload only the part that shows the pattern.

Checklist: reviewing a draft against your style

• Parties and defined terms are named the same way throughout.
• The caption matches the court, the case number and the local rule.
• Headings follow the firm's pattern and the argument reads in order from the headings alone.
• Citations follow your format, and every authority has been read. Supported case citations get a CourtListener status when that check is available. Statutes and rules are not checked; see how citation checks work.
• The signature block is complete under Rule 11(a) and the local rule.
• Font, spacing, margins and page or word limits meet the court's rule. Draftiro does not check these.
• No placeholder or verification marker is left in the text.
• Nothing from the exemplar's original matter, such as names, dates or facts, has carried over.

Style never replaces substantive review

A draft that looks like your own work is easy to trust, and that is the risk. When you sign a filing, FRCP 11(b) certifies that its legal contentions are warranted and its factual contentions have evidentiary support after a reasonable inquiry. ABA Formal Opinion 512 applies the duties of competence and confidentiality to generative AI tools. Read the facts against the record, check every authority, and confirm the law of your jurisdiction, however polished the formatting. The AI ethics page and the Formal Opinion 512 entry cover the guidance in more depth, and the motion drafting page walks through a full draft.