A Letter From an Agency: Have AI Translate It Into Plain English

A letter from a government agency, an insurer, or a formal notice has a strange quality: even written in your own language, it isn't actually understandable. "Notice of deficiency pursuant to statute §37" triggers anxiety without telling you the one thing that matters — what you're supposed to do now, and by when. Most people set a letter like that aside "for later," and that's exactly how a small thing turns into a problem, because deadlines keep running regardless. AI translates bureaucratese into plain language reliably: it's a text-to-text conversion job, no fact-finding involved where it might make things up.

Pursuant to §37(3) of the Administrative Procedure Act, you are hereby requested to remedy the deficiencies of your submission within eight (8) days of delivery hereof, failing which the proceedings shall be discontinued.

1. They want a missing document added to my filing.
2. Deadline: 8 days from delivery of the notice.
3. If I do nothing, the case gets closed — so I send it now.

How to do it

1. Photograph the letter or upload it as a PDF to a chat. Before uploading, black out or omit your ID number and account number — they aren't needed to understand the letter.
2. Use this prompt:

Here's a letter I received from a government agency.
Explain it to me like I have no legal training. Answer in
exactly this structure:

1. WHAT THEY WANT FROM ME — in one sentence.
2. BY WHEN — every deadline in the letter and what it's
   counted from.
3. WHAT HAPPENS IF I DO NOTHING.
4. EXACTLY WHAT I SHOULD DO — steps in order, including
   what to send where or where to fill something out.

Always quote the spot in the letter you're basing this on.
Don't infer anything that isn't in the letter — say if
something's missing.

3. Read the answer with the letter next to it and verify the quoted spots — especially the deadlines and amounts, those have to match the original exactly.
4. Put the deadline from point 2 into your calendar right away, with a buffer. That's the whole point of the exercise.

A typical scenario

Freelancer Tomáš finds a notice from a government agency in his inbox. Two pages of citations to statute sections, his first read: "probably trouble." His second read, an hour later: he still doesn't know whether he has to pay something or just submit a document.

He uploads the letter to a chat and a minute later has the translation: they want a report for last year that never arrived, the deadline is eight days from delivery, and penalties only kick in after that deadline passes unmet. He checks that the deadline and the case number in the answer match the original, submits the report that same evening, and puts a calendar reminder to confirm the agency acknowledged receipt. An hour of anxiety turns into a twenty-minute task.

What you get out of it

The most valuable part isn't the time saved, but that you stop putting the letter off — an understandable task with a deadline gets done right away; an incomprehensible threat gets postponed for weeks. Keep the boundary clear, though: AI explains the letter and proposes steps, but the decision and the submission are yours. For disputes, appeals, and anything involving real money, the final word belongs to a lawyer — how to check what to trust from AI is covered in the tip AI makes things up with total confidence.

Pro tip

When the response to the letter is some kind of filing, continue with a fifth point: "draft a response and a list of attachments I need to include." Treat the draft as a first pass to edit yourself — but the list of attachments is gold, because a missing attachment is the single most common reason bureaucratic back-and-forth takes two rounds instead of one.