AI Publication in American Legal & Financial Network (ALFN)
I wanted to share a publication I recently authored with a colleague for the American Legal & Financial Network (ALFN). The entire ALFN spring publication centered on AI. Many of the articles address interesting quandaries for legal professionals in the age of AI - how to deal with knowledge management, when to trust automation, and how to implement automation, among others.
For our piece, Adam and I wanted to focus on the legal user and provide some insights into AI that could help maximize productivity, with the added benefit that the techniques shared would also increase AI accuracy in a highly skeptical industry.
Our article, "Unlocking AI's Power in Legal Practice," doesn't shy away from being technical, but tries to offer practical insights for legal professionals approaching their work with AI models.
You can check out the full publication here -- our article can be found on page 32: ANGLE Vol 12 Issue 2 (Spring 2025)
What the Article Covers
The central premise of the piece is that the gap between "AI that kind of works" and "AI that actually improves your work" is almost entirely about how you engage with it — not about the tool itself. Legal professionals tend to approach AI the same way they approach new software: get access, figure out the basics, move on. But AI rewards a different kind of engagement, and most users never get there on their own.
Adam and I focused on prompt quality as the highest-leverage skill a legal professional can develop. Not in the sense of memorizing templates, but in the sense of understanding what makes a prompt useful: specificity about context, clarity about the desired output, and a willingness to iterate rather than accept the first response. These habits compound. A practitioner who develops them works faster and gets more accurate output — which matters considerably in an industry where accuracy isn't optional.
We also spent time on the skepticism question directly, because it's the right instinct applied in the wrong direction. Healthy skepticism about AI outputs is appropriate. Blanket skepticism that prevents adoption means falling behind peers who are doing the same work in half the time. The article tries to give legal professionals a framework for knowing when to trust AI output, when to verify it, and when the task isn't suited for AI at all. That distinction is more useful than any general endorsement or dismissal of the technology.
The piece is deliberately practical — it's written for the attorney or paralegal sitting down with an AI model to draft a memo or research an issue, not for a technology audience.
Why This Matters for Law Firms Right Now
Legal is one of the industries where AI productivity gains are most measurable and most uneven. Firms that have invested in structured adoption — even informally — are seeing real time savings on research, drafting, and document review. Firms that haven't are doing the same work they were doing two years ago, at the same cost.
The barrier usually isn't access to AI tools. It's the absence of anyone helping the team actually use them well. That's the gap Fractional AI Leadership is designed to close — not by deploying technology for its own sake, but by building the practical habits and internal clarity that turn a tool license into a productivity advantage.
If the themes in the article resonate with where your firm is, I'm happy to talk through what a structured adoption approach would look like for your team. Reach out here.
