Summarize a new law for colleagues with NotebookLM

When a law or regulation changes, colleagues need three answers: what changed, from when, and what they must do. NotebookLM produces a summary with those answers in about 20 minutes, and it has one property that matters for legal text: it answers only from the document you upload and shows which clause each statement comes from. That makes every point checkable. The official text and a check of the effective date are your part.

Get the official text

Download the law or regulation from the official legislature or agency website. If a comparison table of old and new wording exists, take that too; it makes the "what changed" section much sharper. News articles and blog posts are useful for knowing that something changed, and a poor source for what exactly changed. They round off deadlines, confuse draft and adopted versions, and summarize one article as if it covered the whole law.

Create a notebook and upload the official text as the source. Check that the file has a text layer; scanned PDFs read poorly and need OCR first.

Who reads and why

Before prompting, write down who the summary is for (accountants, HR, managers) and which company processes the change may touch: payroll, invoicing, hiring, reporting. This shapes both the language and the action list.

Role: you are a lawyer who explains changes in legislation to colleagues in plain language. Context: the document {{title, number, date}} is uploaded as a source. Readers: {{accountants, HR, managers}}. Company processes it may affect: {{list}}. Task: summarize in this structure: 1) what changed, point by point with a reference to the clause, 2) from what date each change applies, 3) whom in the company it concerns, 4) what to do and by when, 5) what stays the same even though it is widely discussed. Rely only on the uploaded text and add nothing from memory. Format: up to 400 words, no long dashes, every point with the clause or article reference in brackets.

Point five is the one colleagues thank you for. Every legislative change comes with rumors, and a short list of "this did not change" saves a round of questions.

Checking the summary

Click through the citations for each point and read the clause. Pay special attention to dates: different provisions of one law often take effect on different dates, and a summary that gives one date for everything is wrong in a way that costs money. Confirm that the answer relies on the notebook's source rather than on a general description of the law.

Then turn "what to do" into real tasks with owners and deadlines. The model can suggest actions; assigning them is a company decision.

What to do

1. Download the law or regulation and any comparison table from the official website.
2. Upload them to a new NotebookLM notebook.
3. Run the prompt with the document title, the readers and the affected processes.
4. Check every point against the cited clause, especially effective dates.
5. Add a list of company actions with owners and deadlines.
6. Send the summary to colleagues and save it in your knowledge base with the date and a link to the source.

When it is ready

Every statement references a clause, the effective dates are verified, and there is an action list with owners. Saving it with the source link means that when the next amendment comes, you start from a known base.

Plans

The free tier allows up to 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook and 50 questions a day, which covers regular legislative updates. Google AI Pro at 19.99 USD per month raises the limits, and Workspace Business at 14 USD per user with annual billing adds shared notebooks for the team; remember that a shared notebook opens all its sources to everyone with access. See NotebookLM pricing, the accountant's version of this task and NotebookLM vs Claude.