4.2.3. Graphviz (Dot Language)

Graphviz is a freely available tool for creating visual diagrams, ranging from simple entity-relationship diagrams to more complex flowcharts. Graphviz includes a special text-based syntax that can be used to programmatically draw diagrams called Dot Language. This means we can have ChatGPT create diagrams for us by asking it provide its response in Dot Language. We can then take the generated Dot Language text and use Graphviz or other common software tools to generate an image of the diagram.

We saw ChatGPT output responses in Dot Language back in section 2.1.3 to generate an organizational chart. Now let's put on our estate planning hats and work through a prompt that will have ChatGPT create a visual representation for a hypothetical client in need of business & estate planning guidance.

Backstory (fictional)

Meet the Walker family from Dallas, Texas. The Walker's have a growing real estate portfolio consisting of residential rental units. Johnny Walker, the wealth creator of the family, and his wife Jessica, are ready to bring their two children into the business to help manage the properties. We won't get into the semantics, but their imaginary attorney, Mark Case, rendered hypothetical counsel on how they should organize their holdings using a Series LLC. Mark Case is prompt engineering wizard and had ChatGPT generate a diagram illustrating what this might look like using Dot language.

Our Prompt:

Using Dot language, create a diagram for a Series LLC. The master LLC will be 
named "Walker Real Estate Holdings LLC" and 7 series (children) named to match
this pattern: "Walker Real Estate Holdings LLC - Series {number}" where {number}
is replaced with the number of the series.

As expected, ChatGPT returns a diagram output in Dot language that we can use to generate an image that can be shared with the Walker family.

This image was generated via ChatGPT's response

You can take a look at our ChatGPT interaction (link) to view the Dot language response. Don't be afraid to tinker with this example by modifying our prompt, and submitting iterative prompts with additional information for further learning.

Thought Experiment: I got sidetracked

Estate planning has always been an area of law of interest to me. I wanted to find out how strong ChatGPT's legal intuition is, if one even exists. I took a step back from the prompt we used above and decided to provide a minimal amount of information regarding the Walker's family situation without prescribing the legal strategy that should be taken (organize a Series LLC). It's response was better than I expected. Take a look at my conversation with ChatGPT here. I had to guide the AI model to go down the path of architecting a Series LLC. I also had to revise my prompt once to instruct it to derive the name of each Series LLC from the Master's name (I momentarily forgot about the importance of specificity 😄).