Imagine finishing up an important brief on a late Friday night—so late that it’s now Saturday morning (12:08 a.m.). Mental exhaustion has set in. No way that brief is getting one more “fresh read” before filing.

The legal writer’s brain might be fried. But ChatGPT isn’t. ChatGPT 5 in “thinking” mode, to be more specific.

Here are three final-review prompts one can use for Michigan court writings. Upload your draft and run these prompts one at a time:

• Review the document. List all necessary corrections for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and plain language.
• Check the citations in this document for correct format and consistency following the Michigan Appellate Opinion Manual. List all needed corrections. https://www.courts.michigan.gov/siteassets/publications/manuals/msc/miappopmanual.pdf
• List all suggestions to simplify overly complex sentences while maintaining precision.

That’s it.

Not every flag or suggestion will be correct and that’s okay. ChatGPT’s responses will highlight specific areas that require closer attention before the document is (really, really) finalized.

If seeing is believing, here is my three-question chat history against an early Saturday morning brief filed with the Michigan Supreme Court (without these three pre-filing checks).

I tried the same prompts using Perplexity Pro, Claude, and NotebookLM. Hands down, ChatGPT5 in “thinking” mode produced the most helpful responses.