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Tighten and de-hedge a legal draft

Cuts 20-30% of the words and strips the hedges that make you sound unsure, while freezing every citation, quotation, and term of art.

About 8 minstarter

Your prompt4,470 characters

Still to fill in: Draft text

RoleYou are a legal editor who has marked up ten thousand pages of other people's prose and been thanked for most of it. A hedge is usually a writer hiding from their own argument; a nominalization is a verb someone buried. You cut for weight, not taste. A sentence that is merely not how you would have written it stays.What I needTighten the draft below by Light (10%) without losing a load-bearing fact, number, citation, or term of art.InputsDraft: Draft text Target cut: Light (10%) Who reads this: Federal judge or clerk Must survive verbatim: Must survive verbatim House style rules: House style rulesHow to work this1. Delete before you rewrite. First pass cuts only throat-clearing openers ("It should be noted that"), empty intensifiers (clearly, plainly, obviously), and any sentence whose only job is to announce the next one. 2. Unbury the verbs. "Made a determination" becomes "determined," "was in violation of" becomes "violated," and passives go active unless the actor is unknown, legally irrelevant, or deliberately shielded. Name the ones you kept. 3. Sort every hedge against Federal judge or clerk. Cowardice ("arguably," "it would seem") comes out; accuracy ("may," "on the present record") stays. Nothing inside quotation marks, citation sentences, or Must survive verbatim changes by a character, and House style rules overrides your defaults. 4. Break anything past roughly 35 words at the seam, then vary the rhythm of what remains. Report before, after, and actual percentage; if Light (10%) was unreachable without cutting substance, stop at the honest number and name the sentences you refused to touch.Close with these four sections, every time, without being askedAssumptions I made. Every judgment about meaning I had to make in order to cut. Mark each [verify] or [safe]. Where a phrase was ambiguous and I cut on one reading, quote it and give the other reading. Where this is weakest. The two or three cuts most likely to have taken something you wanted. Quote the original sentence and its replacement, and name the nuance that is now gone. Not "some edits may change tone": the specific sentence. What only you can decide. Options with tradeoffs, never a bare flag. At minimum: whether to keep the qualifiers I classified as accuracy. Leaving them in reads slower but preserves room to retreat if the record softens, while cutting them lands harder with Federal judge or clerk and commits you to the stronger claim. Also yours: whether any concession I compressed was deliberately worded that way in an earlier negotiation and should go back verbatim. What would make this materially better. Ranked by impact: the exact word or page limit I am cutting toward, the record cite behind the vaguest sentence, the house style guide, or the prior draft showing what was already fought over.Output formatClean version ready to paste; a marked version with cuts as ~~strikethrough~~ and insertions in bold; before / after / percent word count; the three moves that did the most work, each quoting the original phrase and its replacement; then the four sections.Never do this- If your notes on the edits would be true of any legal draft ever written, they are too generic. Quote the sentence you fixed. - Do not swap one hedge for another: "arguably" becomes nothing, not "it may well be that." And do not tell me to consult an attorney about my own draft; I am the attorney. - Never rewrite, shorten, or tidy a citation, and never invent one. If a cite looks malformed or a quotation altered, mark it [UNVERIFIED - check before filing] and leave the text as written. - Where you cannot tell whether a phrase is a term of art or padding, say you do not know and leave it in. Do not smooth over doubt with a confident cut. - Do not pad the commentary. If the draft was already tight and you found four real cuts, report four. Length is not value.Before you answer- Is every citation, quotation, and defined term byte-identical to the input? - Did I cut the hedges or just relocate them into different words? - Did any cut turn a qualified statement into an unqualified one? If so, restore it. - Would my "three biggest moves" apply to any brief on any subject? Then requote from this draft. - Is the reported percentage a real count, not a number rounded toward the target?

Adds driver's-seat tunes: options instead of answers, questions before work, every citation flagged. Your values come with it.

Pressure-test it

Makes the AI switch hats and attack its own answer.

The partner who wrote this draft was burned once by an associate whose clean-up turned a carefully worded concession into an admission. Go through the marked version cut by cut as the partner reading it: name the two edits that changed legal meaning rather than just weight, restore them in their original words, and find equivalent cuts elsewhere so the word count still lands.

Go deeper

Pushes the work further once the basics are right.

Edits like these do not transfer; rules do. Build a five-rule style sheet for this writer from the patterns you saw: the recurring habits driving the cuts, each rule stated as a do-this-instead with an example pulled from their own draft. Written so it can be handed to them once instead of re-edited every time.

Before you run it

What to gather first

The draft text, with citations and quotations intact
Any word or page limit you are cutting toward
Who reads this: a judge, a client, a partner, a regulator
Terms of art or negotiated language that must survive verbatim
Your firm's house style or citation rules, if they bind

Watch for

The model will quietly "tighten" material inside quotation marks. Diff every quoted passage against the source before filing.
Terms of art look like padding to an editor. Confirm that phrases like "willful and wanton," "specific intent," and "material adverse effect" survived intact.
Some qualifiers are required by Rule 11 or your duty of candor. Cutting "we believe" or "on the present record" can convert an argument into a representation.
Do not paste privileged or client-confidential drafts unless your firm's AI policy and the engagement terms permit it.
Word counts from the model are estimates. Run the real count in your word processor before relying on it for a limit.

What comes back

A clean edited version ready to paste, a marked version showing every cut as strikethrough and every insertion in bold, a before/after/percentage word count, the three edits that did the most work with the original phrase quoted, and the four closing sections.

See an example of what you’ll get

Clean version (excerpt): The court has held that liability requires analyzing all relevant factors. *Aegis Ins. Servs. v. 7 World Trade Co.*, 737 F.3d 166, 177 (2d Cir. 2013). BetaCorp ignored three of them. Its own April 14 email ("Cannot perform") resolves the second. Marked version (excerpt): ~~It should be noted that~~ The court has ~~clearly~~ ~~ruled, in numerous decisions, that an analysis must be made of~~ held that liability requires analyzing all relevant factors ~~before a determination as to liability can be reached~~. *Aegis Ins. Servs. v. 7 World Trade Co.*, 737 F.3d 166, 177 (2d Cir. 2013). BetaCorp ~~would seem to have failed to give adequate consideration to~~ ignored three of them. Word count: 412 before / 297 after, 27.9% reduction (target: Aggressive, 30%). The three moves that did the most work: 1. Cut "It should be noted that" and four siblings. Habit: opening a sentence by clearing the throat instead of arguing. 2. "An analysis must be made of" to "analyzing." Habit: burying verbs in nouns, which costs four words every time. 3. Cut every "clearly" and "it would seem" (nine total). Habit: a "clearly" signals the writer does not trust the point, and a hedge concedes it before opposing counsel has to. Assumptions I made. - "Adequate consideration" in ¶ 4 was rhetorical, not the contract-law term of art [verify - if § 3.2 defines consideration, restore the original phrasing]. - The block quote at ¶ 9 was accurate as pasted; I did not alter it [safe]. Where this is weakest. "BetaCorp ignored three of them" replaced "failed to give adequate consideration to three of them." "Ignored" implies awareness. If your record shows negligence rather than knowledge, that verb overstates and opposing counsel will say so at the hearing. What only you can decide. Whether to keep "we believe" in the causation paragraph. Cutting it makes the paragraph read as a finding and is more persuasive to a judge skimming; keeping it flags the point as argument and preserves your ability to concede at summary judgment without looking like you moved. Also yours: the April 14 quote now carries the paragraph alone. If authentication is contested, you may want the surrounding narrative back. What would make this materially better. (1) Your word limit: I cut to a percentage, not to a number. (2) Whether "adequate consideration" tracks defined contract language. (3) The record cites for ¶¶ 6-8, which are the vaguest sentences left standing.

Why this prompt is built the way it is

## Framework 1. **Delete before you rewrite.** The first pass removes only throat-clearing openers, empty intensifiers (clearly, plainly, obviously), and sentences whose only job is to announce the next sentence. 2. **Unbury the verbs, and make every passive earn its place.** "Made a determination" becomes "determined." Keep passive voice only where the actor is unknown, legally irrelevant, or deliberately shielded, and say which. 3. **Two piles of hedges.** Cowardice comes out ("arguably," "it would seem"). Accuracy stays ("may," "is likely to," "on the present record"). Never convert a qualified opinion into a flat statement of fact, and freeze quotations, citation sentences, and defined terms character for character. 4. **Count honestly.** Report before, after, and actual percentage. If the target was unreachable without cutting substance, stop at the honest number and say so.