In this article:
Overview
Skills are reusable instructions that guide how the LawVu Assistant handles specific requests, tasks or processes. They help the Assistant apply consistent guidance, whether it’s following a playbook, working through an intake checklist or using your team’s preferred tone of voice.
There are two types of skills:
Built-in specialist skills are provided by LawVu. They support matters, contracts, spend guidelines, task management, and knowledge retrieval.
Custom skills are created by your organization. They tailor the Assistant’s responses to your team’s procedures, playbooks and ways of working.
The Assistant reviews each skill’s name and description to decide whether it fits the user’s request. When it selects a skill, it reads the full instructions and uses them to guide its response or work through the task.
Custom skills can improve consistency and the quality of responses, but poorly configured instructions may lead to errors, bias or inappropriate guidance. Review and test each skill before making it available for wider use.
Getting access
Only Organisation Administrators can create and manage custom skills. Once active, a skill is available to users in its assigned group who have Assistant access.
Skills must be configured before use. They cannot be applied to past conversations.
Before setting up a skill, check that:
Your organisation has licensed Workspace Intelligence (WI), available on the Matters Only, Engage, Essentials and Ultimate tiers.
LawVu Assistant is enabled in Admin Portal > Organisation Settings.
The intended users have Assistant access. Access is on by default for Organization Administrators and In-House Legal users, and off by default for Contributors and Standard Users.
Each skill is assigned to one user group: All users, Admin users, In-house legal users, Contributor users or Standard users. This lets you tailor the Assistant’s responses to the needs of different groups.
We recommend working with LawVu when setting up skills, as this is an advanced configuration option.
Get started
Create and publish a custom skill in five steps. Skills must be set up before use and cannot be applied to past conversations.
1. Open the Skills page
Go to Settings > AI Management > Skills.
2. Choose a user group
Skills are organised by who they apply to: All users, Admin users, In-house legal users, Contributor users and Standard users.
Click + next to the group you want the skill to apply to.
Choose the group carefully: skills cannot be moved between groups after creation.
To view an existing skill, select it. Its details include the description, instructions, Active toggle, Edit button, and delete icon.
3. Draft your skill
On the Create a skill screen, choose how to write your skill:
Use the Skill assistant - recommended. Describe the task in plain language, including the inputs, expected outcome and any business rules. The Skill assistant turns your description into a structured draft. LawVu strongly recommends this option unless you have experience writing skills.
Start from scratch. Click Start from scratch to complete the fields yourself. Use this option if you prefer to write the skill manually or have prepared it in another tool.
For inspiration, see our example skills and prompts.
4. Review and refine
Review all three required fields, whether they were drafted by the Skill assistant or entered manually.
Field | What to enter | Limit |
Name | A short, recognisable name your team will use to find the skill | 64 characters |
Description | What the skill does and when the Assistant should use it. | — |
Instructions | The full procedure the Assistant should follow, step by step. | —
|
The Assistant uses only the name and description to decide whether a skill matches a request. Make both specific so it can select the skill appropriately.
Use headings, lists and tables in the Instructions rich-text editor to make the procedure easy to follow.
The panel on the right provides two tabs:
Skill assistant: A chat to help you draft and refine the skill.
How to guide: Tips for writing effective skills.
5. Save and publish
When the skill is ready, click Save and publish to make it active. To save it as a draft, choose Save from the button’s menu.
To update a skill, select it and click Edit. The Skill assistant is also available while editing.
To unpublish a skill without deleting it, turn off its Active toggle.
Skills cannot be moved between user groups. To recreate a skill in another group:
Copy its name, description and instructions into a temporary document.
Turn off the original skill’s Active toggle.
Create a new skill under the correct user group.
Copy the saved content into the new skill, review it, then save and publish.
Create a skill from a conversation
You can also turn a conversation into a skill. Once the Assistant handles a task the way you want, ask it to remember this as a custom skill. It proposes a Create Custom Skill action; approve it, and the new skill is created, set to active and added to your Skills library.
Telling the Assistant "in future, do X" is not enough on its own. It will agree, but that preference only lasts for the conversation. Save it as a skill to make it stick.
Example use cases
A good skill codifies one specific task your team repeats. Example use cases:
Skill | What it does |
Invoice analysis skill | Summarises billing issues across a matter's invoices: executive summary, impact by category, causes, invoice drilldown and review priorities |
Route matters to the right owner | Assigns matters to an owner based on matter type (for example, Training and Development to one person, everything else to another) |
Triage matters |
|
Reassign matters for leave | Reassigns matters when a team member is away |
Standardise matter and contract names | Name new or rename existing matters and contracts to apply organisational naming conventions |
Working with Assistant responses
You do not need to call a skill by name. The Assistant automatically applies an active skill when your request matches its description.
When a skill is used:
Approvals still apply. Actions that read information run immediately. Actions that create or change information—such as creating tasks, adding notes or updating matters—still require your confirmation. Use Approve and remember to approve repeated actions within the current conversation.
Sources are included. Answers based on records, files or knowledge articles include citations you can follow to check the source.
Review is still needed. Skills help make responses more consistent, but you should still check the output for accuracy.
Open the relevant record before making your request. For example, when you open a matter, the Assistant displays it as Context and offers quick prompts such as Show invoice issues for this matter. This helps a skill such as Invoice analysis use the relevant matter data.
Tips for better results
Keep the name and description tight and specific, because they are how the Assistant routes a request. Put the detail in the instructions.
Field | Do | Good | Avoid |
Name | Under 64 characters, task-focused, recognisable to a lawyer; verb + object | NDA first-pass review | contract-helper-v2-FINAL |
Description | Lead with what it does, then when to trigger; name the matters, document types or requests it covers | Reviews inbound NDAs against our playbook and flags non-standard clauses. Use when a counterparty NDA is attached to a matter or intake request. | Helps with NDAs. |
Write the instructions as a standard operating procedure for a capable junior lawyer, in plain English, with headings and short, numbered steps. Cover:
Scope and out-of-scope: what the skill does and does not handle.
When to use and when no to use: to help the Assistant better interpret when to use it
Inputs: the documents, matter fields or data needed before starting.
Procedure: numbered steps referencing your playbook, clause library or policy positions.
Guardrails: privilege, PII and confidentiality rules; when to escalate to a human.
Output format: the exact deliverable, such as a redline, summary memo, checklist or risk table.
A practical way to build a skill is to work the task through with the Assistant first, refine it with follow-up questions, then ask it to remember this as a custom skill.
Review the generated instructions in the Skills library and then test it on a new example before relying on it.
Before wider rollout, test each skill with realistic requests. A badly configured skill can contain errors, bias or inappropriate guidance.
Limitations
A skill shapes how the Assistant works; it cannot extend what the Assistant is allowed to do.
Limitation | Details |
Admin-only creation | Only Organisation Administrators can create or edit skills. |
Not retroactive | Skills apply to new conversations only, not past ones. |
No new capabilities | A skill cannot make the Assistant do something it has no tool for. For example, it cannot delete records, approve contracts or invoices, or browse the web. |
Approvals still required | Write actions a skill triggers still need user confirmation |
No legal advice | Skills support operational and administrative work, not formal legal advice. |
Privacy and permissions
Skills run inside the same security boundaries as the rest of the Assistant.
Permission parity: the Assistant acts with the permissions of the signed-in user. A skill cannot give access to records that user cannot already see.
Audit trail: write actions are recorded in audit logs and activity history, and organisation administrators can review conversation threads.
No model training: customer data is not used to train public or foundational AI models.
Write guardrails into the skill: spell out privilege, PII and confidentiality rules in the instructions, including what must never leave the matter.
Troubleshooting
I cannot see Skills in Settings
Confirm you are an Organisation Administrator.
Confirm LawVu Assistant is enabled for your organisation by checking with LawVu support or your CSM and your organisation has LawVu Intelligence.
Contact LawVu support.
The Assistant is not using my skill
Check the skill's Active toggle is on (filter the Skills page by Active).
Start a new conversation; skills do not apply to earlier ones.
Check the skill targets the user group of the person asking.
Ask the assistant why it didn’t apply the skill
Tighten the description so it names the matters, documents or requests that should trigger it.
The Assistant behaved unexpectedly
Ask the Assistant what tools it used and in what order.
Check whether a skill changed its behaviour for that topic and review that skill's instructions.
Retry with exact identifiers such as the full matter name, contract name or reference ID.
The Assistant agreed to a change but did not keep it
Instructions given in chat ("in future, include scope management") last only for that conversation. Ask the Assistant to remember this as a custom skill or Update the xxx custom skill, approve the Create Custom Skill action, then check the skill in the Skills library.
The Assistant used the wrong skill
This happens when two skills cover similar requests, such as Invoice analysis and Matter-Aware Invoice Review.
Say what you want in the request, for example "review invoices with matter context".
Edit the skills' descriptions so each one states clearly when it should and should not trigger.
If one skill now replaces another, turn the old one's Active toggle off.
FAQs
Do users need to choose a skill?
No. The Assistant picks the matching skill automatically from its name and description.
Can a skill take actions without approval?
No. Write actions still need explicit user confirmation.
Can I limit a skill to certain teams?
Yes. When you add a skill, you add it under a user group: All users, Admin users, In-house legal users, Contributor users or Standard users.
Will a new skill change past conversations?
No. Skills apply only to conversations started after they are set up.
Can I switch a skill off without deleting it?
Yes. Turn off its Active toggle; it will appear under the Inactive filter.
Can I create a skill without going to Settings?
Yes. Ask the Assistant to remember what it just did as a custom skill and approve the Create Custom Skill action.
Can I move a skill to a different user group?
Not directly. Copy its instructions into a Word document, make the original inactive or delete, create a new skill under the right group and paste them in.
Should we get help setting up skills?
We recommend working with LawVu, as skills are an advanced configuration option..