The B2B Podcast Index
BE THAT LAWYER

Jeremy Baker: Why Lawyers Must Get AI-Literate or Get Left Behind

BE THAT LAWYER · 2026-06-25 · 32 min

Substance score

49 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density10 / 20
Originality8 / 20
Guest Caliber12 / 20
Specificity & Evidence12 / 20
Conversational Craft7 / 20

Jeremy Baker, a construction lawyer and solo practitioner, discusses how AI is transforming legal practice and why lawyers must become AI-literate to remain competitive. He shares practical examples of using AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Replit to save hours on document review and work automation, while exploring the broader implications for law firm business models, the future of big law, and the likely displacement of legal roles.

Key takeaways

  • Lawyers don't need coding skills to leverage AI - basic ability to cut and paste and willingness to experiment is sufficient to start seeing immediate productivity gains.
  • AI can reduce routine tasks like organizing court filings from hours of work (involving secretaries or virtual assistants) to just five minutes of AI processing and summarization.
  • The billable hour business model in big law is unsustainable as AI increases associate productivity, likely forcing firms toward flat-fee arrangements and smaller headcounts.
  • Market forces will eventually compel law firms of all sizes to adopt AI and efficiency practices, with traditional high-billable-hour models becoming increasingly uncompetitive.
  • Lawyers should focus on becoming AI-literate by experimenting with accessible tools and platforms rather than waiting to become experts, as literacy and awareness are more important than mastery.

Topics in this episode

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

10 / 20

The episode contains a handful of genuinely useful operational insights - offline local LLMs for client-data safety, the irony anecdote of a firm locking its own lawyers out of Claude - but these are surrounded by extended throat-clearing, motivational clichés, and sponsor reads that dilute the useful-ideas-per-minute ratio considerably.

I pulled down more than 150 filings. I think it was 161, instruct AI about, you know, read them all, figure out the order that they were filed, and retitle the documents so that we can have a common language...And it literally took five minutes for me to get these answers.
the only people in the room that were not allowed to access Quad, that were literally locked out of CLAUDE on an IT basis were the hosts of the event

Originality

8 / 20

The 'nobody fires the starting gun' framing and the offline air-gapped LLM approach for confidentiality are genuinely fresh angles, but the broader thesis - billable hour is dying, AI will displace junior lawyers, get literate or get left behind - is some of the most recycled commentary in legal tech discourse right now.

nobody is coming to save them. Nobody's going to say, now is the time for you to educate yourself about AI. No one's going to fire the starting gun.
if you have sufficiently robust hardware to download open source AI models from the Internet and then you can completely disconnect your computer from the Internet and it can run

Guest Caliber

12 / 20

Baker is a legitimate practitioner with 25 years of experience including partnerships at AmLaw 100 and 200 firms who has actually built AI tooling himself - credible and relevant. His candid admission that he has no original thoughts and is purely synthesizing others caps his ceiling as a source of insight.

I was in big law for the first 19 years of my career. The last job I had before I started my law firm in 2019, I was uh, a partner in AmLaw200 firm where I was for 14 years.
there probably won't be any original thoughts from me on this, uh, podcast. I'm mostly synthesizing what I'm hearing from others

Specificity & Evidence

12 / 20

The episode punches above average on specificity for this genre: named dollar figures ($18K bill, $10M/$8.5M flat-fee example), named tools (Replit, Claude Code, Cowork), concrete targets (161 filings, 475 website pages, 3 hours to 3 minutes), and a named external authority (Dan Schnerbush). Several claims, however, remain unsubstantiated predictions.

a couple weeks later I got a bill that was almost $18,000
the goal is to take a three hour contract review, redline task, take it down to three minutes

Conversational Craft

7 / 20

The host consistently validates rather than probes: he restates the guest's points back, offers his own analogies (tractors, sandboxes), and never challenges the bold predictions or asks about failure modes, cost-benefit specifics, or workflow detail. The interview functions as a warm conversation between acquaintances rather than a rigorous knowledge extraction.

Yeah, uh, yeah. And I think we're all sort of like playing in the sandbox and trying to figure this out as we go.
Yeah, well, that's really cool.

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the verbal tics along the way.

Share of words spoken

  • Speaker C60%
  • Speaker A39%
  • Speaker B2%

Filler words

you know102uh49so49like35right21um11I mean11sort of6kind of5er3actually3literally2basically1obviously1

Episode notes

What happens when a big law partner walks away from a “wonderful job” to build an AI-powered solo practice? In this episode, you’ll hear how one construction lawyer is using AI to slash hours of work to minutes - and why lawyers who stay on the sidelines risk being left behind. In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Jeremy Baker discuss: Leaving big law to launch a solo practice How AI is practically used in day-to-day legal work Efficiency, billing models, and the future of big law Ethical and strategic considerations around AI adoption Encouragement for lawyers to experiment and get AI-literate Key Takeaways: You don’t need to be a coder to benefit from AI; the willingness to experiment and basic skills like copy-paste are enough to start transforming your workflow. Tasks that once required staff support, days of delay, and high cost can now be compressed into minutes with the right AI tools. Traditional big law business models built on leverage and large billable-hour teams are likely to face serious disruption as AI boosts individual productivity.

Full transcript

32 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Speaker A: Hey everybody. Before we get to the show, just want to remind you that the Be that Lawyer community is up and running and rock and rolling. We have a lot of amazing business, developer and rainmaking attorneys in there. We've got incredible content, courses, live events, and all kinds of ways to help you to be that lawyer. Check it out today@, uh, bethatlawyer.com community and other than that, please enjoy the show.

Speaker B: You're listening to Be that Lawyer. Uh, strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Pritzen will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here's your host, Steve Fretson.

Speaker A: Hey everybody. Steve Fretson. And welcome to Be that Lawyer. I'm just so thrilled that you're here. This is our opportunity to take, you know, talk 30 minutes twice a week to help you be that lawyer. Confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. I just am absolutely excited to be here with Jeremy. He was on our show not that long ago. We did a let's go solo with Jeremy and uh, my friend Jordan Ostroff. And we had a really great two part series. And unfortunately, what I wasn't able to get out of Jeremy because it wasn't our topic was really more going down the rabbit hole of how he's using AI, how he sees AI in legal space. And I know that topic's kind of being thrown at you every minute of the day, uh, yet you may not be hearing from someone in the trenches, a lawyer like you that's using it in a way that's being highly constructive and beneficial to his practice. So we'll get into that in some great detail. But most importantly, Jeremy, how are you, buddy? Good to see you.

Speaker C: It's great to see you, my friend. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker A: And I love your quote. This was, uh, I'm going to give the shortest version of it. Was it Seneca?

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: That life isn't actually short, we just waste most of it. And it sounds like, I think of the man on his deathbed and he's saying, if I had only billed another hour. Oh, uh, right. And then he's, he's gone. It's like just one more or just like, you know, just wasted more time. You know, just with my head buried in my phone or something, wasting away. Anyway, good to see you, Matt. And tell us a little bit about that quote.

Speaker C: It was one of the reasons that I decided to leave a really wonderful job in big law. I was in big law for the first 19 years of my career. The last job I had before I started my law firm in 2019, I was uh, a partner in AmLaw200 firm where I was for 14 years. And even though I love my job, I love the people I worked with. I thought about what my life and my career would look like 20 years in the future. And even though it would have been great by any objective measure, it wasn't exactly what I wanted for myself and my away from my four kids. And so I decided to make a move, uh, inspired by thoughts like what you just covered.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's uh, everything's moving so fast right now. And you know, when I think of the legal industry and where I started 18 years ago, it was like the slowest moving freight train you'd ever want to be in front of when you're trying to cross the tracks. And now it's like, I think it's like, feels like it's worse speed and I don't know how a slow moving industry stays with it. But I'm, um, I'm excited to hear what you have to say about it before we do that. Everybody. Jeremy Baker is the owner and founder of Baker Law Group and Operation Palm Tree. Some incredible videos and content online, helping solos around the world to really get their act together and figure that thing out. In fact, one of my new members of the be that lawyer community was just raving about how much he loved your content. And I was like, yep, that's Jeremy. He's the man. So thanks for the camera Turn on you. How'd you come to be so, uh,

Speaker C: I'm a construction lawyer. I've been a lawyer for 25 years, running my own firm for the last six. And uh, I think I've had an interesting career. You know, I did the associate thing at two firms. I did the partner thing, you know, at the big firm. I've been running a firm myself. I've, I've hired, I've uh, let people go. I've transitioned through different seasons after having made a lot of mistakes. And you know, I'm just trying to keep up with what's going on right now with an eye towards the future.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, you know, every time I see you, we belong to the same like racket paddle club Tanaka. Shout out to our Tanaqua friends that aren't listening right now. But, uh, and I run into you and right away we just, we go into talking shop and I love to hear what you're up to because it's always something interesting. And you seem to always have, you always seem to be ahead of the curve. You're just so interested in what's changing and evolving. And then, then you tell me some stories about that. I know you're going to share some on the podcast today, but just so kind of give sort of like your take on sort of where things are right now in legal and maybe with the option to go solo for people.

Speaker C: One of the great things about my job right now, the job that I've created for myself, is that, uh, we've got a relatively low billable hour requirement because we're not needing, uh, to keep a bunch of fat cat partners rich. And a big part of my job is keeping an eye on what's happening. And so I hadn't paid attention to AI at all until January 2025. And I've spent basically all my time, uh, since then trying to just learn what's going on. And I should say that there probably won't be any original thoughts from me on this, uh, podcast. I'm mostly synthesizing what I'm hearing from others that's resonating with me. And, you know, I certainly don't have all, all the answers. And if you're, you wouldn't want to confuse me for somebody who really is on the cutting edge. If you want to talk to somebody on the cutting edge. Dan Schnerbush, uh, ah, probate attorney in Missouri, is probably the smartest guy in terms of AI and where we're going right now. But I have really thrown myself into it. I'm building a number of different things. I'm, I'm playing around. And what was most interesting to me about trying to use AI, different sorts of AI, different applications, different hardware, different software, is that the only skill that I really needed was the desire to get started and then the ability to cut and paste because there's no coding required to play with this stuff. So we could talk about some of the different things that I'm doing. But for those of you out there who are thinking I'm not a coder, let me assure you, neither am I. All you really need to do is be able to cut and paste to go down the road that I've gone down.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean, when I, like I said when we, when I ran into you, you will tell me a story of how you used AI that just saved you like a hundred hours. And you're like, you're actually going in and using it in a safe and ethical way. Uh, that Other lawyers maybe just aren't quite up to your speed. So maybe you could share an example of that or two.

Speaker C: I've had a couple interesting things happen to me over the last 30 days that I think are really illustrative of where various lawyers are at. And perhaps some conclusions can be drawn about what might happen. You know, one example was I received a phone call out of the blue two weeks ago, late on a Friday. Someone I hadn't talked to in two years, uh, wanting me to maybe get involved in some litigation. I pulled up the file online. There was more than 150 court filings. And you know, a couple years ago I would have had a secretary pull all those down and retitle them and put them in order and present them to me. And I would've had all the expense associated with an in person employee and the delay or two, a day or so of delay, pulling this person off the other work that they were doing to do this very low level task. And when it landed on my lap, I would still have a couple hours of trying to figure out what the documents said. So I had all this cost and I had slowness, ah, you know, lack of speed. In another version of my firm, I might've had a virtual assistant do this work for me. And it might have solved the expense part of it, but the time part would have still been a problem. I would have had to wait a couple days at least, and then I would have had a couple hours trying to study this. And this wasn't a billable task because it wasn't an active client. It was just something I was trying to figure out. But what I actually was able to do on that phone call was to pull down more than 150 filings. I think it was 161, instruct AI about, you know, read them all, figure out the order that they were filed, and retitle the documents so that we can have a common language in terms of helping me look at the ones that matter the most and summarize everything that happened in the litigation over the last two years. And it literally took five minutes for me to get these answers. And so the time component and the cost component, that would have been a real problem for me even a year ago, went essentially down to zero. And I don't mean to suggest that that's a particularly groundbreaking use of AI. I mean, that's like table stakes. This is, you know, 1% of 1% of the use case. So that's one example of how, you know, AI is very easy to Sort of weave into a, uh, practice, really any profession that's heavy on information and analysis. Another. The second thing that happened to me over the course of the last month that I found to be interesting was I hired a law firm, uh, to do what I thought was a pretty simple task for me. It wound up being writing a two page document. You know, I looked at this as maybe an afternoon's worth of work. If I did it the old fashioned way, probably I could do it myself with AI in an hour. And you know, a couple weeks later I got a bill that was almost $18,000. And when I questioned it and I kind of wanted to know what happened, the person who was helping me out showed me how thick their binders were of the paper that they printed up. And you know, I had to kind of bite my tongue and not make a commentary about wow. Whether I thought that business model and that particular, you know, way of practicing law has much more Runway left on it. But when you juxtapose those two things, I think that you can see that something is changing. And you know, if there is any message that I would like to spread from the rooftop, it's that, you know, you don't have to become an expert, but you do have to become literate. You know, you have to figure out what's happening and you got to play around with some of these fun toys a little bit.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, yeah. And I think we're all sort of like playing in the sandbox and trying to figure this out as we go. And then there's some people that are out there, you know, that are, you know, hustling to create software, hustling to create consultancies to help us figure this stuff out. And you know, I'm, um, have a, uh, I have a hankering for at some point getting an agent and having someone create an agent that's going to do a bunch of things that, you know, maybe marketing people would do or maybe assistants would do or maybe Automate better Automate email. But we're not quite there yet. I think most people are still sitting there just talking to ChatGPT or playing around with Claude or not doing, not doing too much. But you're right that we all need to start getting literate in it and working through it. Is there a place that you think lawyers should start from a standpoint of maybe not on the marketing stuff? Because, uh, maybe I can tackle that, but from a standpoint of just start to get some hours off their plate? Just things that normally that they would, you know, Again, the time and the money. Where should they start with that?

Speaker C: Over the course of the last year and a half, when I've really been thinking about this, there was one particular moment where I was listening to a podcast, the uh, Moonshots podcast, which I think is terrific if you're interested in all things AI and exponential. And one of the people on the podcast said, stop what you're doing right now, hit pause and sign up for a replit or a blitzy account, which is vibe coding and play. And I said, that's exactly what I'm going to do. And so, you know, I paused the podcast and I got a replit, uh, account. It was 20 bucks and I started talking to it about what would be interesting to do. And my uh, 14 year old son is really interested in Seinfeld these days, which is a lot of fun for me as a kid who grew up in the 90s.

Speaker A: Thank God somebody is under 25.

Speaker C: And so, so what I did with Replit is I said, let's make an app where there's one button, you push the button and what will pop up is a funny thing that Kramer said. And then a description of how he tumbled through the door, you know, and I just said, using common English, this is what I'd like you to create. Five minutes later I had the app and I've had so much fun with my son and it was an eye opening moment for me because when you interact with a computer or an iPhone, it's only code, right? And I don't know anything about coding, but you don't need to be a coder anymore. These interfaces, you just say what you want and it will do it for you. So the next thing that I did with Replit was a little bit more on my practice. I've been for a while wanting to get a drip marketing campaign started and I've got a lot of content on my website and I wasn't sure what would be the top 20 things that I wanted to drip out to an audience, you know, an email every three weeks. And so I built something that looked at my website and I said, you've got 475 pages here. I think that these are the 20 and this is the sequence. And I've been wanting to accomplish that particular marketing exercise for years. I just never had the time. But the next day I had it going and so it empowered me to move. And all that I did is hit pause on the podcast, swipe my credit card, 20 bucks, speak at uh, Replit in English and Here I am. And I've had that same experience again and again with ChatGPT, with Gemini, with Claude Cowork and you know, playing with Claude code and many other AI interfaces. I think that people overestimate the difficulty here. If you have any friction in your life or your practice and you can speak, you know, into the microphone and you can do a little copying and pasting, you have everything you need to start playing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that's really cool. Hey everybody. Your next big client might call at 8pm on uh, a Saturday night. The question is, who's picking up? With Lex reception, a real person answers every call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So you never miss a lead, no matter when they reach out. No AI agents, no voicemail, just professional legal literate receptionists representing your firm the right way, around the clock. And right now, be that Lawyer listeners get 250 off their first month. Visit www.LexReception.com partners BethatLawyer to claim your offer. That's www.LexReception.com Partners BD Lawyer. Hey everybody. Steve Fretson here and@lawyer.com they don't just market law firms, they help them grow. From connecting millions of consumers to trusted lawyers to smarter intake and industry leading events, they're building stronger connections across legal visibility, intake, events, growth. That's lawyer.com check them out today with proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm. Rankings IE prides itself on proof, not promises mentality. The best firms hire Rankings IO when they want rankings, traffic and cases other law firm marketing agencies can't deliver. Get more rankings, get cases and schedule a free consultation at Rankings IO today. The concern that lawyers have, I mean obviously there's some ethical concerns and I know one of my clients for example, uh, is amazing and she's way ahead on AI. And uh, she was, you know, concerned that if she sent a doc to a client and the client put the document into ChatGPT to like check it or ask like, or to, you know, check her work or to whatever, just sharing her work, that, that it would become a problem. So she figured out through AI how to protect it. So that if AI scanned it, it would immediately say don't, you know, don't read this and protect her client privilege and protect her client from making a terrible error putting that, you know, on the Internet. And there are things that lawyers need to know about the ethics of it. But also, you know, how this is going to change the game for lawyers in general. What's your take on that and how you see things in six months, a year, three years.

Speaker C: I have a really optimistic vision for the future. I think that there's going to be some short term displacement as people adopt the technology at different cases. I think that they're going to be, there's going to be a shake up. I think, you know, the law firm that I described that, you know, has all the binders may have a hard time competing with people who are, you know, looking ahead a little bit further. And I think that companies across the economy and law firms as well are, you know, going to get smaller. I think there's going to be more of them and I think that they're going to be smaller, which is one of the reasons why I, you know, created Operation PalmTree.com. it documents my journey from being a big law partner to, uh, starting my own independent practice. There's, you know, as you mentioned, 50 videos, there's no paywall. A lot of them are 10 minutes long. So it's, you know, everything that I know. But I think that, you know, big law firms will continue to exist. I think that their business model is going to change. I think there's going to be a lot more small and solo firms. But I have a very positive vision for the future. I think that there's a lot of abundance that's waiting for us all five to ten years down the road and even much more quickly for people who try to keep up with what's going on right now.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, the um, tractor took the place of the, the man in the field, the horse and buggy, whatever. And you know, farming still continues. Right. Just more efficient. And I think, you know, this is all going to happen now. Is that going to displace people? I think we both agree that it will. Lawyers are very smart and nimble and able to change course. So whether that's lawyers going out on their own, starting their own practice, getting involved in small firm, uh, maybe saying, hey, you know what, I'm going to take my legal knowledge and my ability to solve problems. I'm going to go start a business or maybe incorporate myself into another business. That being said, I'm also concerned that there's going to be, you know, lawyers coming out of law school and lawyers that are, you know, three years in, one to three years in that are gonna, you know, they're gonna have to figure out a whole career, you know, change. And so, you know, are they planning for that right now? I don't know. I don't think so.

Speaker C: Yeah, you Know, I, I recorded a video in February where I made a prediction about there being a lot of unemployment in the legal industry over the next few years. And, um, and a lot of people were making similar predictions just about the economy generally. And I think that, you know, the conventional wisdom in June of 2026 is that we're not necessarily seeing that, but what we are seeing is a hiring freeze. And so young people are having a hard time, uh, getting a job not just in legal, but in a lot of industries. But I really, I'm sticking on my guns on, you know, my prediction that there is going to be, you know, some unemployment throughout all of the different tiers of legal, uh, just because we've gotten away as a profession with being relatively inefficient. I've been trying to convince clients for seven or so years that flat fees are the way to go. Very little interest in that from my clients. You know, we're. I do most of my work still based on the billable hour, but I don't think that it is, you know, billable hour has been much aligned and, you know, it's. The death of the billable hour is so cliche right now. I've been talking about it for years. But I do think that on, um, market forces are likely to really shake up the business model of a lot of law firms, particularly big law, you know, which is, um, built on leverage. You and firms that I worked for, you know, one of them was AMLA 100. I think I've got 809 law, 900 lawyers. Another was AMLA 200. At the high water mark, I think we had 400 lawyers. And you know, big law is built on leverage. Now you got four to seven lawyers per equity partner. And human billable hours drive the model. And we're already seeing right now AI increasing associate productivity. And it's not possible for every large law firm out there, when they get their associates twice as efficient, to just go grab twice as much work. I mean, there's a limited amount of work out there. Setting aside the whole access to justice discussion, because there's a lot of people that need legal representation. But the sort of clients that we're talking about, there's a limited number of them. And I think that there are going to be some intrepid law firms out there that are going to say, you know, we got a lot of data on what it costs to do this litigation. This is a $10 million piece of litigation in the past. We think that we can probably do it much more efficiently. We can, you know, cut our costs down, have a few less people around here, and we can flat fee it at eight and a half million. And I think that a few intrepid firms are going to go out there and start doing that and grabbing up a bunch of market share. And when that starts to happen, the firms that want to practice in the more traditional way, they're going to have no choice but to follow suit. And so it's not a desire for flat fees. It's not, you know, some thing that I want. I just, having been an associate and a partner at large law firms, having run my own firm, I think that market forces are going to drive firms of all sizes, particularly the large firms, which tend to be more inefficient towards less people doing more, sharing a smaller fee, but keeping a relatively larger portion of it. And the question becomes, what happens to all of the people that filled the roles that are not necessary anymore?

Speaker A: Yeah, the interesting thing too is the, yeah, I don't know how we circle the square with law firms that are, you know, billing out, you know, a thousand hours or 5,000 hours on a particular matter that are able to, through AI and all this, you know, knock it down to, you know, 300 and then what happens to their profit model? And I don't know how they're going to play, play through that because every year with every business it's, you can't do worse than the last year. You can't make less, you can't, you know, do, do. People aren't going to take big cuts. Equity partners aren't going to take less every year. They're just not going to stand for it or sit for it or anything. So that's where I guess I'm, I've got to, I got to figure that, I got to do some math or something and figure that out or I don't know, like if there's a big law attorney that, uh, or big law, you know, managing partner or board member that can, can help me figure out the math on that. I just don't know how flat fees fit when you're charging, you know, $10 million and you're able to flat fee it. But meanwhile they can still check and see if, you know, maybe it could be done for 2 million because they're, the staff is so small now.

Speaker C: Well, and I think what you're getting at is a very important point because the people who have clawed their way onto the executive committees of these large law firms, that's a long, you know, path that you work very hard over decades. And these people are the least likely to want to disrupt, uh, you know, what they've built at the moment that they're at the apex of their career. And they're probably reaping the financial rewards of like decades of sacrifice. So there's a disincentive, I think, baked into some of these larger organizations with the people that get to make decisions about how they should think about AI. And I had, I promised you three anecdotes. I have only given you two so far. But I had a really interesting experience at a wonderful large law firm that has a bunch of friends of mine that invited me, uh, last month and one of my associates to come to an event that they put on. And it was consultants, uh, that were going to teach the room how to get the most out of quadrant. And, uh, I show up, uh, all excited with my associate, and there's dozens of this law firm's clients in the room with us, you know, all getting instruction on how to use Quad. And I pull my friends aside and I've got the utmost respect for the firm and for my friends who invited me there. And it turns out that the only people in the room that were not allowed to access Quad, that were literally locked out of CLAUDE on an IT basis were the hosts of the event. So the lawyers that invited me to come along were not able to play with Claude in the way that their guests and I was, because it had it locked down. And that comes from the top of the firm, which is conservative. I get it. I'm conservative too. I mean, I would never expose client data. You know, I am very paranoid about that stuff. But I'm concerned that there are too many lawyers out there that don't realize that nobody is coming to save them. Nobody's going to say, now is the time for you to educate yourself about AI. No one's going to fire the starting gun. No one's going to give you permission. This is the sort of thing that you have to do yourself. And if people could take away anything from this episode, I would say throw yourself into it and just, ah, play.

Speaker A: Well, I was going to say it has a lot of parallels to business development. It's not anything lawyers wanted. It's not anything they signed up for. It's not what they, uh, you know, would have predicted they'd have to do in their career as a lawyer. Right. That's not the mindset going in. And yet now it's like, hey, you want freedom, career and independence in your life? Then you need to build a book of business. Like everyone knows that. Now, whether you do it or not, you know, that's a different story. And I think same thing with AI. I think the people that are throwing themselves into it and utilizing it, whether that's for marketing and business development, like we're doing that, be that lawyer, or it's the lawyers that are doing it like you, that are trying to figure out how do we get super uber efficient so we can knock out things and save the client money and not have to, you know, waste our time on stuff. But that's, you know, this is the game that we're in. This is like the world that's changing and you're either, you know, you're either in the game or you're sitting on the sidelines. And I'm very concerned about the people who feel that they, uh, are better off on the sidelines. I just, what does the future hold for them? And they're the person in the field watching the tractors go by them going, why am I not, you know, getting paid anymore?

Speaker C: So, yeah, you know, and I'm having a lot of fun with some, you know, really edgy stuff that I'm glad to talk to you about because if I talk to my wife about it anymore, she's going to kill me because, you know, a lot of people don't care about this stuff. But, you know, in addition to using things like, you know, ChatGPT or Claude, it's possible if you have sufficiently robust hardware to download open source AI models from the Internet and then you can completely disconnect your computer from the Internet and it can run. I mean, as long as you've got power, I could take it to the moon. No WI fi necessary. And you know, I have been having a lot of fun with a laptop that I bought that I am using Claude cowork and Claude code to build a harness around a really intelligent LLM that is just a couple of weeks behind the latest, um, CLAUDE versions. And you know, I'm talking to Cowork about what I want and it's talking to Claude code and those two things are coding away. And I am building something that is going to be safe because it's going to be off the Internet. We're going to expose no client data. Once I've got the harness built, I'm, um, going to disconnect it from the Internet and I'm trying to build something that I'll train on my entire body of work for the last seven years. I'm lucky that I Control that data. I can do this. The goal is to take a three hour contract review, redline task, take it down to three minutes. And I haven't achieved it yet. And it might fail if it does. I'm learning a ton along the way about computers and technology that I would have never otherwise known. But six weeks and maybe 50 hours into trying to build this, I am very optimistic that by the end of the year, I'm going to be able to take a three hour test down to three minutes. And this is. I've never been so excited about anything in the 25 years that I've been a lawyer.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And I remember when I first started talking into my phone and asking questions. My wife was giving me a hard time and then I caught her doing it. And uh, and then now she's addicted to talking to her phone and asking questions. And now we're all, we're all neck deep in it. Hey man, I got a qu. Final question for you. What's Jeremy's big mistake? And just.

Speaker C: Oh, boy, there's so many. Steve. Uh, you know, that's why you stump me here. I could talk for hours about this. You know, I think that I was saddled for most of my career with an idea that, you know, there are people that can run a law firm and I'm not one of them. There are people who can develop business and I'm not one of them. There are people that can do things that are edgy, and I'm not one of them. And I, you know, I'm just not a coder, I'm not a tech guy. So, you know, maybe I'm just going to kind of wait to see what happens. And I realized that nobody was going to fire the starting gun. No one's going to give me permission. Nobody really understands this stuff. Um, as long as you're safe about the way that you're using the technology, um, not exposing client information to the Internet in ways that would be unethical. The future is moving. It's moving away from people who are not standing still. And like, I'm running at it, trying to keep up as fast as I can, trying to keep up with the smart people who are ahead of me. And I would encourage everybody to get in there and play. These tools are fun. They're relatively low risk. If I hear another person complain about hallucination of case law, just gonna go nuts. I mean, just double check the citation. I mean, like, it's. No, it's not Perfect.

Speaker A: But it's, you know what, don't let, uh, you know, good be the enemy of perfect. Just, you know, or don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I think is a saying something like that. So, you know, just. Yeah. You check your work. I mean I, I use it to edit my articles for above the Law. And I'm not, you know, it's just like Grammarly, that's AI. I mean they're all, they're all helping me to write in a way that's going to make sure I don't look like a moron. So I'm appreciative of it. Hey, let's take a moment, thank our amazing sponsors, of course, lawyer.com, great directory. We've got Lex reception. Do not pick up your phone. Let the pros do it and get it to you. And of course pimcon coming up in October. It's slowly creeping towards us. You're going to want to check that out, everybody. Jeremy, people want to get in touch with you to network with you. Baker Law Group or, uh, learn more about Operation Palmtree. What are the best digits?

Speaker C: Operation palmtree.com is a great place to start. It's everything I know about leaving the employ of other lawyers and going into independent practice. There's a ton of information there and it's all, uh, free and available. So I would be delighted to hear from people that watch some of those videos.

Speaker A: Yeah, superstar. I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming back after just being on a little bit ago and sharing your wisdom on not just being a solo but the AI phenomenon and what, and you know, I can bring on AI experts and have. I just think it's important for lawyers to hear from lawyers and what other people are doing. I think there's a lot of curiosity around what their take is on doing it, using it and then what they think is going to happen in the world. So appreciate you, appreciate you coming to the show and I'll see you, see you at the club soon.

Speaker C: I hope I'll see you on the courts.

Speaker A: All right, take care. Thank you everybody for hanging out with Jeremy and I for the last 30 and change. Um, helping you to be that lawyer. Confident, organized and a skilled rainmaker. Take care everybody. Be safe and well. We'll talk again soon.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening. To Be that Lawyer Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website, Fredsen.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today's episode. Check out today's show notes.

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