Ask Blue J’s content recommendations are powered by an innovative algorithm that weaves together the connections and relationships between source documents so that you can instantly surface cases, documents, and legislation related to your response generated in Ask Blue J.

You can make demands of how the response should look: If you ask the program to provide a brief summary, it’ll be more succinct than if you didn’t include that qualifier. Ask for in-depth, and it’ll provide additional details and context in its response. Feel free to start your prompt with phrases like “Explain in detail...” to see how you can optimize your output.

‍

Working with generative AI tools requires a different approach than working with traditional boolean search tools, and takes a bit of experimentation!

If you are seeing “unable to answer” responses, it is a good reminder that Ask Blue J was built to lower the number of hallucinations or false answers that you might find in tools like ChatGPT. Ask Blue J would rather give a non-response than provide misleading or false information, and sometimes it’s just a matter of re-phrasing your prompt.

If you repeatedly see “unable to answer” messages, try adjusting your prompt: 

• Add line breaks
• Reorder the words in your prompt, or replace words with similar words
• Try replacing any mentions of "§" with Section, or vice versa
• Spell out acronyms
• Ask just the first part of your question if it’s a compound question
• Try removing the words “you” or “I” (i.e. can you / can I…?) from your prompt and using terms that may appear in the source documents related to your prompt
• Try removing value judgement words like “best” from your prompt (i.e. what are the best strategies for...) and instead just ask for "some strategies for..."

It is important to remember that Ask Blue J is relying predominantly on primary federal resources to source answers. If words or phrases used in your prompt have not been used in the source documents, Ask Blue J will be unable to locate an answer.

‍

An example of how to reframe a prompt:

1st Attempt:

• Prompt: How do I undo NOL carry-forward election? 
• Response: Unable to answer

2nd Attempt:

• Prompt: How do I undo NOL carry-forward election, IRC Section 1311
• Response: Unable to answer

3rd Attempt:

• Prompt: Correction of NOL pursuant to Section 1311 
• Response: Success!!

‍

Blue J relies on meticulously curated primary tax resources to provide you with the most reliable answers to your tax-related questions, and does not currently look at internet resources. While Ask Blue J isn't directly connected to the internet, we pride ourselves on providing you with the most accurate and reliable answers to your tax-related questions. Our database of primary tax sources is current and updated regularly.

Blue J relies on meticulously curated primary tax resources to provide you with the most reliable answers to your tax-related questions, and does not currently reference sources from firm websites. While Ask Blue J isn't currently using secondary sources from firm websites, we pride ourselves on providing you with the most accurate and reliable answers to your tax-related questions. If you’d like to request secondary sources, please email us at support@askbluej.com 

‍

To share a question and response with someone external to your firm, simply look for the three icons located below each response. You can:

• Copy to Clipboard: Copy and paste the question, response and sources into a document or email
• Email: open an email with the question, answer and sources using your default mail provider
• Print: to print or save as a PDF for easy reference

Recipients will be able to view the question and response and source names without needing to sign in to Ask Blue J. However, if they do want to experience Ask Blue J for themselves, they can email us directly at support@askbluej.com.

Ask Blue J reads all the source documents shown, not just the highlighted portion, to help craft a response to your question. Our algorithm scans the document to highlight the most relevant sections to the question you asked.

To download a source or document on Ask Blue J, simply click the printer icon in the upper right corner of the source. You can either print directly or save as a PDF from the print dialog box.

Yes! Using the intuitive chat interface, you can work with Ask Blue J as if talking with a tax research assistant. Start a conversation in Ask Blue J by asking your research question to get a high-quality, verifiable answer. Then, ask to go deeper into a specific topic with follow-up questions or Ask Blue J to rewrite the response as a draft email or memo for more efficient drafting. Once you have your response, you can easily copy it out of Ask Blue J into another document to get to a starting point faster than ever.

Go deeper into your research with follow-up questions.

Ask Blue J remembers the context of your conversation so that when you ask a follow-up question to your initial research question, it will remember your earlier prompts.

For example, suppose the response to your original question references Section 1060. In that case, you can ask the follow-up question “Explain 1060” to expand the scope of research, and you will get an answer that builds on your previous conversation.

‍Ask clarifying questions or for more detail.

If the initial response provided by Ask Blue J is a summary and you want to go deeper, simply Ask Blue J to explain in more detail.

For example, if you start with the question, “What are the rules for determining the allocation of consideration received in an applicable asset acquisition?” you can ask a follow-up question, “Provide more detail on the rules for allocation of consideration” to get a more detailed response to your initial question.

Rapidly rewrite an answer into a draft email or memo.

Ask Blue J’s conversational capabilities unlocks rapid drafting capabilities unlike any other research tool. Supercharge your efficiency with prompts to modify and tweak the output to precisely what you want.

For example, simply Ask Blue J to “Summarize the above as a client email,” and it will modify the response to your instructions.

When Ask Blue J responds with “I am not able to provide a confident answer," it means it is unable to accurately respond to your query at this time. There could be a few reasons why:

• Ask Blue J does not have authoritative source material to respond accurately
• Ask Blue J could not interpret the prompt to produce the correct context for an answer

While it may be frustrating to receive a response like this, it actually demonstrates the strength and reliability of our platform and how we are working to eliminate "hallucinations” - inaccurate or fabricated answers provided by the model.

If you think we have said “I am not able to provide a confident answer” in error, try rephrasing your prompt using different keywords, breaking down your request into smaller questions, or simplifying your request.

‍

Security and Trust are fundamental to the services we provide and Blue J is committed to ensuring that our product and processes employ enterprise-grade best practices to keep your data safe. Customer questions are stored in a secure, encrypted database, only accessible to select individuals who need access to maintain the database. We work with an independent auditor to maintain a SOC 2 Type 2 report, on an annual basis, which objectively certifies our controls to ensure the continuous security of our customers' data.  

Ask Blue J does not read, share or learn from any data/information input by our users without their explicit permission. Customer questions are stored in a secure, encrypted database, only accessible to select individuals who need access to maintain the database. We work with an independent auditor to maintain a SOC 2 Type 2 report, on an annual basis, which objectively certifies our controls to ensure the continuous security of our customers' data.  User submitted feedback on answers in Ask Blue J are reviewed by our legal research team alongside our data analysts in order to improve the quality of service.

‍

When you use the thumbs up and thumbs down icons to rate an answer, our team of legal experts and data scientists reviews that feedback to help us improve the accuracy and relevance of our answers.

Any questions or answers you submit through our platform are confidential and will not be reviewed by our team unless you have opted in explicitly to allow us to review for quality assurance. This means you can feel secure in asking any and all tax-related questions you may have, knowing that your information is safe and private.

We're committed to providing you with the best possible experience on our platform, and we welcome your feedback to help us achieve that goal. 

‍

Here are some examples of well-formed prompts you can use in Ask Blue J: 

• Explain Section 1060
• What is the step transaction doctrine?
• Is a nonprofit subject to UBIT on rents from real property?

Feel free to replace your own specific issue or tax situation in the above examples. Book a time with our customer success team for a dedicated prompt-training session.

‍

Here are a few tips to get started: 

• Use as many relevant terms or acronyms related to your issue as you can to help Ask Blue J find what you need. 
• Break down multi-part questions into smaller, individual questions.
• Don’t like what you see? Try to rephrase your question or ask it more succinctly.

Book a time with our customer success team for a dedicated prompt-training session.

Yes, every answer on Ask Blue J is supported by the most relevant sources so that you can be confident in your research. Ask Blue J shows relevant sources whose entire text helped inform the answer, and highlights the most relevant paragraph from each source. Included with every source is its citation number and other relevant information like publish date or date of judgment.

Our database of primary tax sources is current and updated daily.

Ask Blue J is currently trained on US federal tax law and has limited ability to answer questions on state and local tax (SALT) or broader legal questions outside of tax. Ask Blue J is currently using predominantly primary sources to ensure accurate answers about federal tax law. We are committed to bringing you the most current tax data available, and we'll provide updates as our content database expands further.

Ask Blue J is predominantly trained on authoritative primary resources to ensure the accuracy and quality of the answers we provide. Ask Blue J’s content recommendations instantly surfaces cases, documents, and legislation related to your response.

‍

Currently, Ask Blue J answers questions to Federal US Tax law questions. More jurisdictions will be covered shortly!

Ask Blue J is built for tax and legal professionals. We work with the world’s leading professional services firms.

Ask Blue J leverages the latest large language models and our vast tax database to deliver industry leading quality answers to challenging tax questions in seconds using generative AI algorithms. Answers are backed by relevant source documents empowering tax and legal professionals to perform exceptional analysis faster than ever.