Your best tech investment is the one you resist most
It's not glamorous. It's not AI. But it might save you more time than anything else.
I talk about AI a lot. It’s the shiny thing right now, and for good reason — it’s genuinely useful.
But if I’m honest, the single technology change that made the biggest difference in my own practice wasn’t AI.
It was documenting my processes.
I know. Boring.
Nobody gets excited about writing down how they onboard a client or how their VA handles phone inquiries.
But here’s what happened when I did it:
I stopped re-explaining things to my VA every time a task came up
I could take time off without my business grinding to a halt
Mistakes on routine tasks dropped to almost zero
I delegated more confidently — because the process was transferred, not trapped in my head
The connection to AI that most people miss
Here’s the part that matters right now: AI is dramatically better at helping you when you have documented processes.
You can feed your SOPs into ChatGPT or Claude and ask it to improve them, find gaps, or even train a new team member on them. You can use AI to create the first draft of an SOP by describing what you do.
But if everything lives in your head, AI can’t help you systematize it. You have to get it out first.
Where to start
Pick the one task you do most often. Write down every step — even the obvious ones. Don’t worry about formatting. Just get it on paper (or into a Google Doc).
That one document will save you more time this year than any AI tool.
;-)
Ernie
P.S. Inside the Inner Circle, we help lawyers build these systems step by step — with feedback from other lawyers who’ve done it. No guessing alone. → Check out the Inner Circle.