For Immigration Attorneys ·
What you'll accomplish
Every request for evidence or notice starts a plan from a blank page: what the notice asks, what the file holds, what is missing, who gathers it. A ChatGPT Project per matter type holds your firm's own checklists and instructions, so each plan arrives in the same table. The response date comes from the notice, and you type it in yourself. The legal argument, and any authority behind it, stays with you.
What you'll need
Data caution. This project holds only public material and your firm's own checklists, with placeholders. Client names, A-numbers, receipt numbers, passport numbers, dates of birth, addresses, immigration and criminal history, case facts, evidence and employer data stay in your firm's approved systems. The practice below uses an invented notice for matter "IM-26-044" and an invented file list. Asylum, trafficking, abuse and criminal history details never go into a consumer AI tool. Before a real notice goes into any chat, confirm your firm approved this tool for client data under your confidentiality duties and your state bar's rules on AI use, which you check yourself. Then open OpenAI's own pages and your account's data controls to see whether chats and project files are used for training, how long they are kept, and how project sharing works.
matter-type-checklist.txt.What you should see: One short file of placeholder lines.
What you should see: A project page with a place for instructions and a place for files. Troubleshooting: OpenAI changes these screens often and can limit Projects by plan. If you do not see Projects, check OpenAI's help pages for plan availability. Look for the same two things in whatever layout you have: project instructions and project files.
matter-type-checklist.txt.Look for the project instructions, sometimes called custom instructions for the project. Paste this text.
You help an immigration attorney plan the response to a notice. Use only the notice text pasted into the chat, the file list pasted into the chat and the checklist in the project files.
Make a table with these columns: Notice wording (copy the notice's own words), What the file holds (only entries from the pasted file list), Missing, Suggested owner (attorney, paralegal or client), Internal target date.
Leave the Internal target date column blank. Leave the response date for the attorney. Write "Response date: attorney to read from the notice and type here".
In "What the file holds", match entries by their labels only. Do not judge whether an entry is enough.
Never state a rule, argument, authority, citation, form, fee, deadline, response period or what the agency usually does. Never say what the notice means beyond its own words. Never predict an outcome.
If the notice is unclear, write "unclear in notice" and add a question for the attorney.
After the table, list questions for the attorney.
Label every output "Draft for attorney review".
What you should see: The instructions saved on the project. Troubleshooting: If the plan comes back without the blank target column, paste the rule again in your message.
Start a new chat from within the project and paste the notice text and file list from the next section.
Use each inside the project, with the notice pasted in the chat.