The Power User Gap for law firms and in-house legal teams
AI training for law firms and in-house legal teams, on their own matters.
AI training for law firms and in-house legal teams, taught to one firm's own people on its own matters and documents. I look at how your lawyers and the teams around them work, find where AI can do real work in it, and teach your people to use it there, with the tools and the AI policy you already have.
For whoever is responsible for getting non-technical people using AI. Nothing to code.
74 talks and 78 workshops in 36 countries since 2014. Google Developer Expert, Agentic AI Foundation ambassador.
Same task, same tool, two different jobs.
What most people send
Write a summary of this report for the leadership team.
What your top 5% send
Here is the report, and the three slides the board saw last quarter.
Summarise it for our leadership team, who already know the background and want what changed.
One page. Lead with anything that moves a number. Flag anything you're unsure about rather than smoothing it over.
Nobody taught anyone the second version. The people who write it worked it out on your documents and your approvals, which is why no vendor course covers it. I teach it on your own work.
Where the gap shows in legal work.
The Power User Gap for law firms and in-house legal teams is legal AI training for one firm's own lawyers and support staff: they learn to use ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini on their own matters and documents, within the firm's AI policy, and a lawyer stays responsible for every output.
These are the kinds of work I'd look at first, for fee earners and for the paralegals, secretaries, knowledge, business development and operations teams around them. Which of them we start with comes out of your team leads and the firm's process documents.
A first pass through long documents
A contract bundle or a long lease cut down to the points that matter, with clause and page references, so the lawyer reading it starts in the right place and still owns the conclusion.
Research starting points
A first map of a question: the issues to look at, the terms to search on, the questions to put to the firm's own research tools. Every authority gets checked at source before anyone relies on it.
First drafts of letters and clauses
Client letters, chasers, standard clauses and the covering email, drafted from the matter notes in the firm's style, for a lawyer to review, correct and send.
A document against your playbook
The other side's draft run against the firm's own checklist or playbook, listing where it departs and what is missing, as a first pass before the lawyer's own review.
Attendance notes to next steps
A call transcript or a rough attendance note turned into the agreed points, who does what by when, and the follow-up email, in the format the team already uses.
Finding what the firm already knows
Knowledge and support teams field the same questions about precedents, templates and internal guidance. The tool drafts the answer from the documents it is given and quotes the passage it relied on.
What the teaching looks like there
First the people attending say how they do this work today, which is the baseline. Then they practise on their own kind of matters with the general assistant the firm already licenses, inside its AI policy: what to give the tool, what to keep out of it, and how to check what comes back. A lawyer stays responsible for anything that goes to a client, a court or the other side. Afterwards the same people say what they now hand to AI and what they still do by hand.
You see what changed, team by team.
The people attending say how they use AI before anything is taught, and what they hand to it after. It works with whatever tools you've already bought. Remote or on-site, so teams in different countries get the same teaching without anyone flying anywhere. No pre-work for attendees.
A 30-minute call
Where your rollout is, and which teams or workflows you'd like to start with.
I look at how your teams work
I talk to the team leads and go through the process documents for the workflows you've chosen, and suggest others where I see a better place to start. How long it takes depends on the scope we agree.
Before
A baseline before anything is taught
The people attending say how they use AI on those workflows today and how that work gets done. That is the mark everything after is measured against.
I teach your people to use AI there
Remote or on-site, for the people who haven't worked it out yet. They learn to use AI on those workflows, so they do that work more efficiently and AI becomes the first thing they reach for. Your power users are welcome to join.
After
What changed
After the teaching, the same people say what they now hand to AI and where they still don't. You see the change against the baseline, team by team, and we decide where the next cohort starts.
For when someone asks what the licences bought.
You hear from the people attending how they use AI before anything is taught, and from the same people afterwards what they now hand to AI and where they still don't. That's the before and after, team by team, to take to whoever approved the spend.
The teaching comes as named courses, one per group of teams, and the call picks which.
Why the gap is still there.
You have probably tried some of these already. This is what each one leaves you with.
The vendor's own course
Teaches the product: the features, the modes, what the assistant can do. Your power users didn't learn there. They worked it out on your documents and your approvals, which no vendor has seen.
An e-learning platform
Produces completion rates. Everyone finishes the module, and on Monday the same one-line prompts go out as before.
Your own power users
They can show what they do, and they often will. They can't see where their habits came from, and they have their own jobs, so the rest of the team gets a lunchtime demo and a link.
A generic AI trainer
Runs the same day for every organisation, on prepared examples. Here the teaching starts from your workflows, so what people practise is the work they go back to.
Who you'd be working with
I've spent twenty-five years teaching engineers and their organisations whatever technology had just arrived, and the last few building with these tools.
- 74
- Talks
- 78
- Workshops
- 36
- Countries
- 2014
- On stage since
Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies, Agentic AI Foundation ambassador, MBA. Your engineering team is different work: the AI Engineering Workshop teaches them to work with coding agents and to build agents, by the same person, so one conversation can cover both.
More about meBefore you book.
- Will the teaching follow our firm's AI policy and approved tools?
- Yes. It uses the general assistant the firm already licenses, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, and follows the firm's own AI policy on every workflow: which tools are approved, what can go into them and what stays out. Writing that policy stays with the firm, and nothing here is legal or regulatory advice.
- Is it for fee earners or support staff?
- Both. Partners, associates and trainees work through the same documents as paralegals, secretaries and the knowledge, business development and operations teams, and the workflow review decides who goes first. No technical background, and nothing to code.
- Does it replace legal review?
- No. Everything in it assumes a lawyer reads, checks and is responsible for whatever the tool helped produce. Much of the teaching makes that review easier to start: asking for clause and page references, and for a flag wherever the tool is unsure.
- We already licensed a legal AI tool. Is this still useful?
- The teaching works on the general assistants a firm pays for: ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. If your people have one of those beside the specialist tool, that is where the teaching applies. It does not cover specialist legal AI products.
- What does it cost?
- It is quoted against the scope we agree on the call. Nothing is priced on this site because no two organisations need the same amount of work.
- What do attendees need to prepare?
- Nothing. There is no pre-work. The scoping happens between us before the teaching.
Questions about the tools, who attends and recording are answered on the Power User Gap page.
The same teaching, for other kinds of work: professional services, financial services and insurance, technology and telecoms and luxury and heritage.
Start with a 30-minute call.
Tell me when the tools went out and which teams you'd start with. It's one quote, for the workflow review and the teaching of the teams we agree on the call, so the figure you forward covers all of it.