<![CDATA[The 80/20 Principle]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LL7j!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F982f7168-20a5-47f3-a552-358e2fe718c3_600x600.pngThe 80/20 Principlehttps://www.the8020lawyer.comSubstackThu, 17 Sep 2026 17:17:54 GMT<![CDATA[The habit that makes AI worth using]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-habit-that-makes-ai-worth-usinghttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-habit-that-makes-ai-worth-usingFri, 11 Sep 2026 12:01:13 GMTThis morning I saw a tweet claiming China now produces more solar power than every power plant in the United States combined.
That’s a big claim. If true, it says something important about where energy production is headed.
So I copied the tweet, pasted it into ChatGPT, and typed: “Validate this.”

What ChatGPT told me

The claim was false. It mixed up installed generating capacity with actual electricity produced — two very different numbers. Then it gave me real figures, with sources attached.
Ten seconds of work. One short prompt. A wrong claim caught before it could settle into my head as fact.

Many people skip this step

Here’s the thing: checking a claim like this is easy. Anyone can do what I just did. But many people won’t.
They’re too reactive, too distracted, or too used to treating a tweet as the final word instead of a starting point. So they either believe the claim or scroll past it without a second thought. Either way, they miss out on something AI makes almost effortless.

The real skill AI rewards

Managing your attention is a real skill in the age of AI. So is knowing how to evaluate information once you’ve slowed down enough to look at it.
Both skills matter more than any prompt trick. The best output doesn’t come from knowing the perfect phrasing — it comes from knowing when to stop, check something, and think a little harder before moving on.

A simple habit to build

  • When a claim surprises you or seems important, don’t just scroll past it.

  • Copy it, paste it into a chatbot, and ask it to validate the claim.

  • Read the answer for the sources, not just the verdict.

  • Treat that answer as your jumping-off point — you can dig deeper from there if the topic matters to you.

Bottom line

AI can’t make you pay attention. But if you’re already paying attention, it makes catching bad information almost too easy to skip.

;-)

Ernie

P.S. In the AI Workshop, we practice this kind of quick validation habit every week — so checking claims becomes automatic instead of a chore.

→ https://ernietheattorney.net/ai-workshop-for-lawyers

]]><![CDATA[The AI agent that shows up before you ask]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-ai-agent-that-shows-up-beforehttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-ai-agent-that-shows-up-beforeTue, 08 Sep 2026 12:01:53 GMTI have been testing a tool called Viktor. It is an autonomous AI agent that integrates with your Slack or Microsoft Teams workspace and works alongside the people already there.

I heard about it from a lawyer in the Inner Circle who is normally reserved about software. She was not reserved about this one. So I installed it, expecting to be underwhelmed.

T…

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]]><![CDATA[The Big Thing Your Small Firm Needs but Can't Yet Name]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-person-your-firm-needs-and-cannothttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-person-your-firm-needs-and-cannotFri, 04 Sep 2026 12:02:56 GMTThere is a job that almost every small firm needs and almost no small firm has. It has no standard title, so nobody goes looking for it. Owners feel the absence as a vague sense that things are slipping, and they blame themselves.

I recorded a podcast episode with Sarah Persich about this. She has a name for the role. She calls herself a fractional integ…

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]]><![CDATA[Before you add an AI agent, get the hub right ]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/before-you-add-an-ai-agent-get-thehttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/before-you-add-an-ai-agent-get-theTue, 01 Sep 2026 12:02:01 GMTThe tool doesn’t matter as much as where it lives.

I’ve been testing an AI agent called Viktor that plugs into Slack or Teams and works alongside your team inside the channel. It’s impressive. But the thing I keep coming back to isn’t Viktor. It’s the fact that none of this works if you don’t have a hub in the first place.

The real barrier isn’t capability

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]]><![CDATA[Build your own AI memory, or rent someone else’s]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/build-your-own-ai-memory-or-renthttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/build-your-own-ai-memory-or-rentTue, 25 Aug 2026 12:01:55 GMTHarvey — the legal AI that big firms pay serious money for — launched its next generation this week. The headline feature isn’t a smarter model.

It’s more robust memory.

Their system can learn a firm’s lawyers’ word choices, their drafting style, how they structure their work, and then use all of that as context inside the firm’s workflows. You can read t…

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]]><![CDATA[Mark Cuban’s advice to doctors might be a good business idea for lawyers]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/mark-cubans-advice-to-doctors-mighthttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/mark-cubans-advice-to-doctors-mightFri, 21 Aug 2026 16:15:54 GMTMark Cuban posted a suggestion for doctors in private practice: sit down with the patient and configure their AI assistant. Custom instructions, a set of saved prompts, and a recurring task that asks the patient the same questions every day at 5pm and sends the results to the doctor. The doctor emails over new questions, and the patient’s AI picks them …

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]]><![CDATA[I’ve been wearing two AI recorders. Only one belongs near a client.]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/ive-been-wearing-two-ai-recorders-96ahttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/ive-been-wearing-two-ai-recorders-96aFri, 21 Aug 2026 12:03:36 GMTI’ve been wearing two AI recording devices side by side to see which one earns a permanent spot.

The Plaud is a meeting recorder. You start it, it captures audio, you get a transcript and a summary. The Fieldy is a small disc you wear on a lanyard or a wrist strap, and it’s always on. It tries to figure out on its own when a new conversation has started,…

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]]><![CDATA[I fact-checked that iPhone theft warning going around ]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/i-fact-checked-that-iphone-thefthttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/i-fact-checked-that-iphone-theftTue, 18 Aug 2026 12:04:35 GMTA story has been circulating online: someone’s iPhone gets stolen outside a bar, and within minutes their Apple ID password gets changed — from their own phone. By the time they notice, a thief is inside their email, banking apps, and photos.

I checked the story’s claims against the settings on my own phone. Most of it holds up. One part needed a correct…

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]]><![CDATA[Kara Swisher unintentionally helped unpack interesting hype regarding Harvey.ai]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/kara-swisher-unintentionally-helpedhttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/kara-swisher-unintentionally-helpedFri, 14 Aug 2026 12:03:47 GMTI heard an interesting mention of Harvey AI on Kara Swisher’s Pivot podcast recently. Swisher’s a well-known tech and business journalist worth paying close attention to, because she’s good at sussing out when tech founders are making hyperbolic claims.

She’s never discussed the Harvey.ai tool before, as far as I know, so my ears perked up when I heard h…

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]]><![CDATA[The AI law firm’s best feature isn’t the AI]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-ai-law-firms-best-feature-isnthttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-ai-law-firms-best-feature-isntTue, 11 Aug 2026 12:01:03 GMTA writer spent two weeks inside Crosby, a New York law firm built around AI from day one. They call themselves a “neofirm.” Half the staff came from Kirkland & Ellis, Wachtell, and Sullivan & Cromwell. The other half are engineers from Ramp and Stripe. They’ve raised $85 million.

The piece ran in late July in a publication called New Ontologies. It’s wor…

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]]><![CDATA[AI didn’t ruin your writing. It removed your reason to edit.]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/ai-didnt-ruin-your-writing-it-removedhttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/ai-didnt-ruin-your-writing-it-removedFri, 07 Aug 2026 12:01:55 GMTFilm cameras had a built-in constraint: every frame cost money. That cost forced you to think before you pressed the shutter.

Phone cameras removed that ceiling. Now you can take two hundred photos of the same sunset and sort them out later.

That shift explains something that’s been bugging me about AI writing, and I think it applies directly to how lawye…

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]]><![CDATA[Everyone I recommend on AI is optimistic. Except Cory Doctorow.]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/everyone-i-recommend-on-ai-is-optimistichttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/everyone-i-recommend-on-ai-is-optimisticTue, 04 Aug 2026 12:03:05 GMTWhen I started blogging in 2002, one of the first signs it was working was a link from Boing Boing. Cory Doctorow was co-editing it then.

I’m sure he has no memory of me. But I’ve read him ever since, and I’ve heard him speak a few times along the way.

I bring it up because he’s the odd one out on my list of people worth following on AI. Nearly everyone e…

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]]><![CDATA[I’ve been wearing two AI recorders. Only one belongs near a client.]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/ive-been-wearing-two-ai-recordershttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/ive-been-wearing-two-ai-recordersTue, 28 Jul 2026 16:55:05 GMTI’ve been wearing two AI recording devices side by side to see which one earns a permanent spot.

The Plaud is a meeting recorder. You start it, it captures audio, you get a transcript and a summary. The Fieldy is a small disc you wear on a lanyard or a wrist strap, and it’s always on. It tries to figure out on its own when a new conversation has started,…

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]]><![CDATA[Walter Isaacson finally got scared about AI]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/walter-isaacson-finally-got-scaredhttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/walter-isaacson-finally-got-scaredFri, 24 Jul 2026 12:03:00 GMTWalter Isaacson was on CNBC’s Squawk Box this week, and he said something you don’t often hear from him. He’s an AI optimist — he thinks it creates jobs and is genuinely useful. But this, he said, is the first thing that flat-out scared him.

Isaacson is worth a listen on this. He’s spent years around the people building AI — he wrote the biographies of S…

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]]><![CDATA[You won’t get replaced. You’ll get skipped.]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/you-wont-get-replaced-youll-get-skippedhttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/you-wont-get-replaced-youll-get-skippedTue, 21 Jul 2026 12:04:06 GMTEveryone keeps asking whether AI will replace lawyers. It’s the wrong question.

A better one comes from a book written in 1988, long before anyone worried about ChatGPT. The sociologist Andrew Abbott wrote The System of Professions, and his framework explains what’s happening to law right now better than most of the AI commentary you’ll read this year.

Pr…

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]]><![CDATA[Your AI-Powered Browser Might Be the Biggest Resource Hog]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/your-ai-powered-browser-might-behttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/your-ai-powered-browser-might-beFri, 17 Jul 2026 12:02:59 GMTA member in my community posted something that sounded like a rant and a cry for help rolled into one. He’s been a fan of Perplexity’s Comet browser for a while. But lately his Mac mini kept running out of memory, and when the force-quit box popped up, Comet was using 10 to 12 GB of RAM — on a machine with 16 GB total.

He asked if anyone else had seen th…

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]]><![CDATA[The boring skill that decides how much AI can help you]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-boring-skill-that-decides-howhttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/the-boring-skill-that-decides-howTue, 14 Jul 2026 12:03:22 GMTI’ve been letting AI work directly with my files lately — reading a whole folder, renaming things, moving documents around, connecting one to another. It’s been useful in ways I didn’t expect. It also showed me something that goes undiscussed, and I think it matters more than most of the advice you hear.

The quiet prerequisite

The people who get the most …

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]]><![CDATA[Lawyers are quietly becoming builders]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/lawyers-are-quietly-becoming-buildershttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/lawyers-are-quietly-becoming-buildersFri, 10 Jul 2026 12:02:24 GMTBob Ambrogi, the veteran legal tech journalist, just interviewed Mark Pike on his LawNext podcast. Pike is the associate general counsel at Anthropic and the product lead for Claude for Legal, the big legal push the company launched in May.

What stuck with me wasn’t the product news. It was how Pike got there. He came up through Facebook and Slack, and h…

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]]><![CDATA[Buy Harvey, or build your own? A smarter way to decide.]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/buy-harvey-or-build-your-own-a-smarterhttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/buy-harvey-or-build-your-own-a-smarterTue, 07 Jul 2026 12:01:29 GMTEvery AI decision you make is a bet on the future. You just haven’t written the bets down.

That’s the idea behind a thought-provoking Every.to article by Dan Pupius, the CTO at The General Partnership. He argues that people building with AI should make their hidden bets explicit — so they notice sooner when one stops being true.

It’s aimed at startup foun…

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]]><![CDATA[A Short Sensible Guide for New Law Students Preview text: Built on the 80/20 principle — plus how to use AI to sharpen your thinking, not dull it.]]>https://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/a-short-sensible-guide-for-new-lawhttps://www.the8020lawyer.com/p/a-short-sensible-guide-for-new-lawMon, 06 Jul 2026 18:14:53 GMTI put together a short guide for anyone heading into law school this fall. It’s based on the 80/20 principle (go figure 😏). But it also explains how to use AI in ways that help foster critical thinking, not impair it.

If you know anyone starting law school, feel free to share it. You can download the markdown file here.

;-) Ernie

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