Enrico SchaeferFouning Attorney, Litigator and Ousdie Counsel - IP, Tech, TRAVERSE LEGAL, PLC · Founding Partner @ TRAVERSE LEGAL, PLC | AI, Blockchain, Social Media, Internet

Prompt engineering just got more important.

15 Nov 2025 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:31

In this solo video, Enrico Schaefer argues that the practice of law is rapidly evolving toward a project‑management and software‑engineering mindset, driven by the emergence of advanced AI tools such as ChatGPT 5.1. He explains that the new model demands highly structured, sequenced prompting—akin to writing code—where instructions are broken into tasks, subtasks, and clear contextual foundations. Enrico stresses that the old habit of issuing simple, one‑off prompts (e.g., “summarize this document”) will no longer suffice; lawyers must learn to design prompt flows, manage AI agents end‑to‑end, and treat AI‑assisted work as a full project lifecycle. He previews a forthcoming series of videos that will teach these skills, urges viewers to subscribe and share the channel, and positions his content as essential for lawyers who want to scale their practice in the AI age.

Chapters

I am of the firm belief that the practice of law is going much more in the direction of project management and software engineering than anyone could have ever predicted before these AI tools came along. And here's why. When we get now into ChatGPT 5.1, which we've been talking a lot about in the prior videos, and we've got a whole line of videos coming that are going to help you understand how to use 5.1, which is a fundamental shift In the way you need to prompt with these tools in order for them to work well, in order to go from 5x to 10x, 10x to 100x. These tools are now going to be following your directions at a much more precise level, meaning your directions need to be really good. Your directions need to be structured in a way that a software engineer would build code. where everything would go in a sequence, in a flow, and there'd be calls and there would be functions and everything is happening in sequence. Everything is organized and put together and engineered in order to get you towards the result. Same thing with project management. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to have these AI agents that are out there doing work for us. And even within a single thread, of ChatGPT, you are going to have to be very precise in setting the stage, setting the foundation, crafting the instructions, sequencing the instructions, providing the appropriate context. The days when you're just going to go to ChatGPT and say, summarize this document, are over. You need to level up your skills. You need to understand how these tools work, and you need to understand how to manage projects from beginning to end. Task categories, tasks within categories, subtasks within tasks, sequencing of tasks, signing and getting back, modifying, reworking, putting more tasks in place. This project management mentality is going to be really important with ChatGPT 5.1. We've got a whole series of videos. Go ahead and subscribe. Share with a friend who you care about, who you think wants to survive the AI age. You're going to help them by bringing them to this channel. If you are a lawyer looking to scale up with AI, you're in the right place. We'll see you next time. My name's Enrico Schaefer.