Start with a claim and its support

An effective drafting system needs more than a template and a record dump. It needs a way to connect each material statement with the source or instruction that supports it. Begin with one section rather than a whole factum.

Create a matrix with: issue; proposed point; factual support; authority support; contrary material; uncertainty; and proposed paragraph purpose. A blank support field is a drafting question to resolve, not an invitation to write around the gap.

Build the section in stages

Stage 1: Define the point. State the conclusion you propose and the assumptions on which it depends. Stage 2: Assemble support. Identify record passages and verified authorities. Stage 3: Outline. Give each paragraph a job. Stage 4: Draft. Use only approved material and flag missing support. Stage 5: Challenge. Test overstatement, omitted qualifications, and the strongest contrary explanation. Stage 6: Verify and edit. Check sources before polishing expression.

Prompt chaining is one way to organize a task into explicit steps, with checks between them. It adds value when the intermediate outputs make mistakes easier to locate. [source]

Work the fictional example

Proposed point: “Alder had notice before the revised delivery date.” Support: an email acknowledges receipt of “your schedule,” but the attachment is missing. Contrary material: the witness says the schedule received was the original version.

The matrix should expose an identity problem. Drafting “Alder acknowledged the revised schedule” would resolve it without evidence. A useful paragraph might instead explain the competing interpretations and identify what would establish which schedule was attached. The right next step may be further review rather than more persuasive prose.

Give the drafter a narrow instruction

text
Draft only the section addressing notice of the revised schedule. Use approved propositions P01–P06 and verified authorities L01–L03. Attach proposition IDs to the working draft's factual sentences. Preserve the dispute about which schedule was received. Flag missing support in brackets. Do not introduce new facts or authorities. Finish with a separate list of substantive choices requiring counsel's decision.

The IDs are working references. Replace or map them to appropriate final citations after verification. Do not leave opaque internal identifiers in a document intended for court or a client.

Review from both directions

First take each draft sentence back to its support. Then take each material qualification in the approved matrix forward into the draft. The second direction detects omissions that sentence-by-sentence checking can miss. Check that an authority's qualification survived the synthesis and that a contrary source was not silently excluded.

Try it: separate critique from revision

A reviewer says “The strongest point is that the attachment was the revised schedule.” What must happen before the drafter adopts that point?

Check your understanding

Identify supporting evidence for the attachment's identity. Review the contrary account and decide how to express the uncertainty. A reviewer role can propose an argument; it cannot create the missing fact. If the point depends on an assumption, label it and decide whether the assumption is appropriate for the actual document.

Review the specification before generating prose

Before a substantial draft, write a short specification: audience, issue, proposed position, record scope, required sections, and unresolved questions. Review that specification, then divide the draft into sections with their supporting sources. Check one completed section before extending the method to the rest. The useful idea from coding workflows is to catch a mistaken assignment early; it does not require creating an elaborate ticket system for a short email.