How Family Law Clients Can Leverage AI to Their Advantage

How Family Law Clients Can Leverage AI to Their Advantage

It’s 10:47 p.m., the end of a long day. You had a verbal fight with your ex about your parenting time plan, in front of your kids, at a drop-off a few hours ago. Your phone buzzes. It’s a six-paragraph text message, from your ex, filled with legal buzzwords and citations to court cases, all with surprisingly perfect grammar. It confidently explains why you’ve “forfeited primary custody” of your children. Your stomach drops.

It’s tempting, in this situation to go to Chat GPT and ask what “forfeiting primary custody” is and how to respond to this text message from your ex. But, AI is not your lawyer. It does not know your jurisdiction’s statutes or local court rules, how judges in your county apply the law, or the facts of your case in context.

This is where your lawyer comes in. It is your lawyer’s job to know the law and apply it strategically to your case. Your job as a client is to provide clear, accurate, information to your lawyer so that, with your lawyer’s guidance, you can make informed decisions about your case.

AI can help you get ahead by organizing facts before talking to your lawyer. Many clients often struggle to explain their situations clearly because their stories have a lot of moving parts: such as sudden financial changes and confusing parenting decisions. All this needs to be explained to a third party, who does not have on-the-ground knowledge about the history of your family’s situation.

Here’s an example prompt a client might use in preparing for a conversation with their lawyer:

“Help me organize the information below into a chronological timeline for my divorce attorney. Include dates and times (or approximate dates), who was involved, and brief factual descriptions related to custody, parenting time, employment, health, and living arrangements. Do not add legal analysis or opinions.”

Then write the narrative.

AI can turn a client’s narrative about an ongoing custody fight into a clean timeline of events and summarize long histories into clear bullet points. In turn, this allows the lawyer to spot legally relevant facts faster so she can spend time on strategy instead of fact-sorting.

As for responding to the text from the ex?

“Please rewrite the following message to be clear, neutral, and factual, without emotional language or legal conclusions.”

Here’s two more example prompts a client might use in preparing for a conversation with their lawyer addressing financial needs in a divorce, after the lawyer has given the client a list:

“Please organize these income sources and financial accounts into a summary table for my attorney.”

“Help me list and categorize my monthly household expenses based on the information below.”

Here’s another for general meeting preparation:

“Based on this situation, help me generate a list of questions to ask my divorce attorney before our next meeting: ”

What do these prompts have in common? They help clients create documents that contain organized, accurate information that will be used to facilitate better communication between the attorney and client. Used thoughtfully, AI can help clients stay organized, focused, and prepared—but it cannot replace legal judgment. When clients use AI to support clear communication and rely on their attorney for legal strategy, the result is a stronger, more effective partnership and a better-managed litigation process.

Caution!  When people lean on AI to generate legal content, it can create real risks ... especially for anyone who isn’t a licensed attorney.  If an individual uses AI to give someone else legal advice, draft their documents, or analyze their legal situation, that conduct can easily cross into the unauthorized practice of law.  Using AI for your own research or self‑help is generally fine, but the moment AI starts standing in for the professional judgment of a lawyer in someone else’s matter, you’re stepping into territory that can lead to serious legal trouble.

AI tools are useful for brainstorming, drafting, or summarizing, but they lack what truly matters in legal work, such as training, ethical duties, and accountability.  And while AI has real potential to expand access to justice, it currently operates in a gray area - one where relying on it to provide legal services for others is viewed by regulators as risky, improper, and in many cases, flat‑out illegal.

Every family law case is different. The right strategy depends on your unique circumstances. For your all of your family law needs, contact Lucy C. Hesse at the Penner Lowe Law Group, LLC at 316-847-8847, to schedule a confidential consultation or visit our website at for more information.