EFFECTIVE GEN AI PROMPTING: USING LITERATURE AND HISTORICAL STORYTELLING TO STRENGTHEN PARALEGAL STUDENT RESEARCH AND WRITING SKILLS

Abstract

Shakespeare writes that the realm of human experience, the pain, pleasure, and passion run on an endless loop. There is nothing new under the sun. Storytelling, too, is timeless, connecting humanity across eons. Students born between 1997 and 2012 identified as “Generation Z” or “Gen Z” and fully exposed since birth to the Internet, streaming subscriptions, and social media, eat their King Lear through the Black Panther movie with its pretenders to the throne. Rather than funneling course content through popular culture, this article proposes new pedagogy by scaffolding enduring works of literature and historical events to leverage Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI or AI) prompting to improve legal research and writing skills. Incorporating storytelling in law is a “particularly potent pedagogical technique” that brings “a concreteness and particularity to what may otherwise appear to be an ephemeral and esoteric subject.”[i] The Niagara Falls of information from millions of databases while mastering citation mechanics and the weight of authority can overwhelm students new to legal research. Paralegal students now require more assistance narrowing the who, what, where, why, when, and how that starts every research plan. Gen AI has turbocharged legal research and short-circuited the exploratory process of determining a legal cause of action.[ii] Extracting from novels and history the conflicts underlying most lawsuits namely greed, manipulation, betrayal, rejection, deceit, dishonor, and selfishness, students can then make connections to corresponding claims in contracts and breach, torts and remedies, property and ownership, family law and government benefits, criminal law and defenses. Through learning how to ask Gen AI questions, called prompt engineering, students can edit the AI-generated responses and deposit their queries directly into traditional legal research platforms like LEXIS and Westlaw and use in their legal writing the same narratives to enhance clarity and persuasiveness.

[i] William Kaplin, Problem Solving and Story Telling in Constitutional Law Courses, 21 Seattle U. L. Rev. 885, 886-87 (1998).

[ii] Paul J. McLaughlin, AI and Law Librarians: Introducing the Idea of Creating a Legal Information Research Team to Prepare Students for the Practice of Law, 44 Legal Ref. Servs. Q. 1 (2025) (discussing how AI has changed the legal research landscape).