PRD Template for Legal Tech Products

Example: "Contract review for a standard M&A deal involves 2,000-5,000 documents, requiring an average of 180 attorney hours at $450/hour ($81,000). 34% of reviewed documents contain no relevant provisions, representing wasted review time. Associates spend 40% of review time on formatting and organizing documents rather than legal analysis."

Example: "Primary: Reduce contract review time by 50% through AI-assisted clause identification and risk flagging. Accuracy: AI suggestions must achieve 95% precision — false positives waste attorney time, false negatives miss risk. Adoption: 70% of associates using the tool for standard contract review within 90 days."

Example: "As an associate reviewing a commercial lease, I want AI to highlight non-standard clauses and compare them to our firm's preferred terms so that I can focus my review on substantive legal issues rather than document comparison. Acceptance criteria: non-standard clauses highlighted with explanation of deviation; firm standard terms shown side-by-side; attorney can accept, reject, or modify each suggestion; all AI suggestions clearly marked as draft requiring attorney review."

Example: "FR-1: Deadline calculator must compute court filing deadlines per jurisdiction-specific rules including court holidays, service method adjustments, and backward-counting rules. FR-2: Privilege log auto-generation from reviewed documents with required fields: date, author, recipient, subject, privilege basis. FR-3: Document comparison must identify changes between contract versions with clause-level granularity, not just word-level diff. FR-4: Matter-level access controls ensuring attorneys see only matters they are assigned to; conflict check before new matter assignment."

Example: "CR-1: Attorney-client privilege — all communications and work product must be segregated from non-privileged data; system must not allow accidental disclosure of privileged material to non-privileged parties. CR-2: ABA Model Rule 1.6 (Confidentiality) — implement reasonable measures to prevent unauthorized access to client information; encryption at rest and in transit. CR-3: E-filing compliance per court-specific requirements: PDF/A format, document size limits, filing fee integration, and electronic service rules. CR-4: Data sovereignty — client data must be stored in jurisdiction specified by client engagement terms."

Example: "Efficiency: Average contract review time. Baseline: 180 hours per deal. Target: 90 hours. Accuracy: AI clause identification precision. Target: 95%. Adoption: Percentage of standard reviews using the tool. Target: 70%. Deadlines: Filing deadline compliance rate. Target: 100%. Client: Average matter cost reduction. Target: 20%."

Example: "Phase 1 (Months 1-2): Contract analysis engine with clause identification. Milestone: 95% precision on 500-document test set. Phase 2 (Months 3-4): Privilege log and deadline calculator. Milestone: Deadline accuracy validated by litigation partner. Phase 3 (Months 5-6): E-filing integration for target courts. Phase 4 (Months 7-8): Pilot with 2 practice groups. Phase 5 (Month 9): Firm-wide rollout."

Example: "Risk: AI clause analysis misses a material risk provision, leading to client loss or malpractice claim. Likelihood: Low. Impact: Critical. Mitigation: All AI suggestions clearly marked as draft; attorney review required before finalization; accuracy monitoring with weekly review of AI misses. Risk: Deadline calculator incorrectly computes a filing deadline due to jurisdiction rule error. Likelihood: Low. Impact: Critical. Mitigation: Dual calculation with manual verification prompt for first 90 days; jurisdiction rule database reviewed quarterly by litigation practice."

Example: "Integration 1: DMS (iManage, NetDocuments) — bidirectional document sync with matter-level access controls. Integration 2: Court e-filing (CM/ECF for federal, Odyssey/Tyler for state) — automated filing with fee payment. Integration 3: Billing (Clio, Aderant, Elite 3E) — time entry capture from tool usage. Integration 4: Email (Outlook) — matter-tagged email filing with privilege detection. Integration 5: Calendar (Outlook, Google) — deadline sync with automatic reminders."

Example: "Q1: Must attorneys disclose AI usage to clients or opposing counsel? Ethical rules are evolving — some jurisdictions now require disclosure. Decision owner: Legal advisor. Needed by: Month 1. Q2: Which jurisdictions do we support first? Federal courts are most standardized; state courts vary dramatically. Decision owner: Head of Product. Needed by: Month 1. Q3: Per-seat or per-matter pricing? Per-seat is predictable; per-matter aligns cost with value. Decision owner: CEO. Needed by: Month 2."