As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly settle a commercial dispute.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the contract, amendments, invoices, purchase orders and relevant correspondence, then copy the relevant clauses and documents into a working folder with their source and date.
   2. Write a date-ordered chronology of what happened, separating what your business accepts from what the other party disputes, and record every amount, offer and admission.
   3. Decide your commercial objective, acceptable outcome and walk-away position, and note who inside the business has authority to negotiate and settle.
   4. Paste the material into the prompt, including the jurisdiction, contract wording, chronology, evidence, other party's position and previous offers.
   5. Ask the model for the issue table, solicitor questions, negotiation plan and draft settlement proposal, then save each output with the source documents.
   6. Compare every name, date, amount, quotation and factual assertion in the draft against the contract and records, and remove anything unsupported or marked as an assumption.
   7. Send the checked chronology, issue table and proposed terms to a UK solicitor for advice on rights, deadlines, admissions, releases, enforceability and authority before making or accepting an offer.
   8. After the solicitor approves the approach, have an authorised decision-maker review the final terms and send the settlement communication through the agreed channel.

   Prompt

   Act as a drafting and analysis assistant for a UK commercial dispute, not as a solicitor. Use only the information I provide and label every assumption, uncertainty and missing document. Do not invent facts, legal authorities, deadlines, figures or contractual wording.
   
   Jurisdiction: [England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland]
   Our business and role: [describe]
   Other party: [describe]
   Our objective: [describe the commercial outcome we want]
   Our walk-away position: [describe, or say not decided]
   Relevant contract terms: [paste the relevant clauses]
   Key facts and chronology: [paste in date order]
   Documents and evidence: [list or paste the relevant material]
   Other party's position: [paste their letter or summarise it]
   Amounts in dispute: [state figures and currency]
   Previous offers or admissions: [paste them or say none]
   
   Prepare:
   1. A neutral chronology separating confirmed facts from disputed assertions.
   2. A table of each issue, the evidence supporting each side, what is missing, and the commercial consequence of being wrong.
   3. A list of questions that a UK solicitor should answer before we make or accept an offer, including jurisdiction, limitation, contractual notices, admissions, confidentiality, tax, insolvency and enforcement where relevant. Do not answer those legal questions as if certain.
   4. A negotiation plan with interests, risks, possible concessions and conditions for any concession.
   5. A draft settlement proposal marked as a draft for solicitor review. Keep it factual and professional, avoid admissions unless I expressly approve them, and include placeholders for payment, timing, releases, confidentiality, costs, governing law, enforcement and treatment of ongoing obligations.
   6. A short checklist of every factual statement, figure and contract quotation I must verify against the source documents before sending anything.
   
   End by identifying the points where sending the draft without advice from a solicitor could materially prejudice the business. This is not professional advice.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.