The 80/20 Principle

ClioCon takes place October 26 and 27 in Boston. You can watch sessions online for free (see link below). If you register and miss a session you can also watch the recording, so I recommend registering with the link below. In this episode I discuss why the keynotes will be especially helpful for solo and small firm lawyers, and recommend a few key sessions that will be well worth your time. I also explain how you can participate in a virtual discussion of the conference sessions with other lawyers like you. Information about conference Keynotes sessions Malcolm Gladwell, "Weak Links, Strong Links: How AI Will Reshape Justice" (closes Day 1, Monday) Ethan Mollick, "From Disruption to Opportunity: Embracing the AI Revolution" (opens Day 2, Tuesday) Mechele Dickerson, on access to justice and the economics of legal services Jack Newton, Clio's CEO, on where Clio is headed Recommended sessions Taking On Clients Who've Already Asked AI (Oct 26) How to Automate Your Firm End-to-End as a Solo Practitioner (Oct 26) AI in Action: What Early-Adopting Law Firms Have Learned So Far (Oct 26, also virtual) Pricing with Confidence: 4 Steps to Charging What Your Work Is Worth, with Molly Kremer (Oct 27, also virtual) Promise and Perils in the Judicial Adoption of AI (Oct 27, also virtual) Resource Links ClioCon 2026 (October 26–27, Boston) — https://cliocon.com Free virtual ClioCon (register to watch a selection of sessions live or later) — https://cliocon.com/virtual-experience/  Full ClioCon agenda — https://cliocon.com/agenda/  The 80/20 Principle (my Substack newsletter) The Inner Circle (try it for 30 days for just $1) Follow and Review: I'd appreciate if you could drop a review over on  Apple Podcasts. It only takes a few seconds and helps spread the word about the podcast. Thanks to the sponsor: Smith.ai Smith.ai is an amazing virtual receptionist service that specializes in working with solo and small law firms. When you hire Smith.ai, you're hiring well-trained, friendly receptionists who can respond to callers in English or Spanish. And they have a special offer for podcast listeners where you can get an extra $100 discount with promo code ERNIE100. Sign up for a risk-free start with a 14-day money-back guarantee now (and learn more) at smith.ai.  

If the 80/20 principle never worked for you, you weren't doing it wrong. You were missing a part never gets discussed. In this episode I cover that part. It has to do with perfectionism, and with whose trial and error you rely on. Then I show how it works in a free automated scheduling tool many lawyers still resist. Why they resist and how to overcome mental blocks with the 80/20 principle are explained in a way that you'll find surprisingly helpful. Resource Links Calendly (automated scheduling software) The 80/20 Principle (my Substack newsletter) The Inner Circle (my online community for lawyers) Follow and Review: I'd appreciate if you could drop a review over on  Apple Podcasts. It only takes a few seconds and helps spread the word about the podcast. Thanks to the sponsor: Smith.ai Smith.ai is an amazing virtual receptionist service that specializes in working with solo and small law firms. When you hire Smith.ai, you're hiring well-trained, friendly receptionists who can respond to callers in English or Spanish. And they have a special offer for podcast listeners where you can get an extra $100 discount with promo code ERNIE100. Sign up for a risk-free start with a 14-day money-back guarantee now (and learn more) at smith.ai.

In this episode, Ernie Svenson talks with Greg Siskind, who has practiced immigration law for 35 years and wrote a book about marketing on the internet back in 1996, when that was a peculiar thing for a lawyer to do. Greg says AI reminds him of email more than any other technology wave he's lived through — the web, the cloud, and social media each changed a slice of legal work, while email changed the day-to-day job itself. They talk about the drafting shift that surprised him most, a 25-page visa petition that used to take two days and now takes 20 to 30 minutes, and about the lawyers who got spooked by the hallucination headlines and won't touch AI even for low-risk work like marketing and firm management. They also get into the ABA's fee opinion, the argument for flat fees, and Greg's new ABA book, "The AI-Ready Law Firm," written for firms with no IT department and no consultant. Chapters 00:00  Meet Greg Siskind, immigration lawyer and early internet adopter  02:34  Why Nashville in 1994 forced him online  05:21  How technology pulled both of us out of big firms 06:41  Decision trees on steroids, DAPA, and the travel ban apps 09:48  The CoCounsel demo that came before ChatGPT 13:12  Supervised agents and the 25-page petition in 30 minutes 16:07  Running a 1,000-prompt immigration library from inside Claude  20:09  Where lawyers trust AI too much, and where too little 22:40  Writing a book for firms with no IT department 26:33  AI note takers and the Zoom terms-of-service problem  29:13  Formal Opinion 512, fraud, and the push toward flat fees  33:49 Using AI as a brutal writing coach 36:12  Why AI belongs inside your case management system 38:57  Why this wave looks more like email than the web  42:36  What he tells law students about relying on AI Show Notes The 80/20 Principle (my techlaw newsletter) The Inner Circle (my online community for lawyers) Greg Siskind Website Greg Siskind Linkedin The AI-Ready Law Firm Follow and Review I'd appreciate it if you could drop a review over on  Apple Podcasts. It only takes a few seconds and helps spread the word about the podcast. Thanks to the sponsor: Smith.ai Smith.ai is an amazing virtual receptionist service that specializes in working with solo and small law firms. When you hire Smith.ai, you're hiring well-trained, friendly receptionists who can respond to callers in English or Spanish. And they have a special offer for podcast listeners where you can get an extra $100 discount with promo code ERNIE100. Sign up for a risk-free start with a 14-day money-back guarantee now (and learn more) at smith.ai.

A few weeks ago, one of Sarah Persich's clients dropped an AI agent into their Slack workspace. Sarah gave it the criteria her client's intake team is supposed to follow on calls — build rapport, handle objections, gather the right information — and asked it to listen to the recorded calls and grade every person against those criteria. It came back ten minutes later with work that would have taken weeks by hand. The tool is Viktor. We spend a good chunk of this episode on it, because it runs inside Slack or Teams and it's proactive. It doesn't wait to be asked. But the tool isn't the whole story. Sarah calls herself a fractional integrator, and it's a role many small firms need without knowing what to call it. Which means they never go looking for one. We talk about where Zapier still fits, why connecting Claude to your email and calendar matters more than it sounds, and where I'd draw the line on giving AI access to your browser. Chapters 00:00 The tool that graded weeks of intake calls in ten minutes  02:17  From law firm employee to the "automation lady" 03:34 Why an automation request is usually a systems problem  07:04 What a fractional integrator does, and where the name came from  09:29 Where Zapier still fits now that AI has caught up 13:21 Claude, MCP connections, and the browser access red flag  17:31 Why connecting email and calendar is the real shift 19:31 Meet Viktor, the autonomous agent living in Slack 21:31 Grading every intake call and catching leads that slipped 25:48 Acting without approval, proactive nudges, and what it costs 31:22 Why firms under ten lawyers need this role, and how to reach Sarah Resource Links Automation Lady Zapier Make Granola Filevine Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business The 80/20 Principle (my techlaw newsletter) The Inner Circle (my online community for lawyers) Follow and Review: I'd appreciate it if you could drop a review over on  Apple Podcasts. It only takes a few seconds and helps spread the word about the podcast. Thanks to the sponsor: Smith.ai Smith.ai is an amazing virtual receptionist service that specializes in working with solo and small law firms. When you hire Smith.ai, you're hiring well-trained, friendly receptionists who can respond to callers in English or Spanish. And they have a special offer for podcast listeners where you can get an extra $100 discount with promo code ERNIE100. Sign up for a risk-free start with a 14-day money-back guarantee now (and learn more) at smith.ai.

Carolyn Elefant has been practicing law for thirty-five years and writing about solo practice for almost as long. In this episode she and Ernie get into how AI is changing litigation — not in theory, but in the cases she's handling right now. Carolyn walks through experiments she's run and posted publicly, including having AI draft the judge's opinion from both briefs before she wrote her reply, and hiding instructions inside a brief to see which AI tools would follow them. One tool refused. One followed them. The third declined the part it considered unethical and went along with the part it considered harmless — which is the interesting one, because it looks a lot like judgment. They also cover which tools she reaches for and when, why she pays for the business version instead of the free one, where a lawyer should start if all of this feels overwhelming, and her upcoming 'Bellwether AI Litigator' conference on September 17 and 18. Chapters 0:05 Episode Overview 1:45 Smith.ai Sponsor 2:30 A Small Firm That Fights Big Energy 7:09 Her First AI Experiments 10:46 Making AI Write the Judge's Opinion 12:59 The Prompt Injection Test 14:44 When AI Starts to Look Like Judgment 17:38 Connecting Claude to Email, Files, and Court Listener 25:02 Where a Lawyer Should Start 27:02 Free vs. Paid, and What Happens in Discovery 28:35 The Bellwether Litigator Conference Resource Links The Bellweather AI Litigator Conference info Early Bird Registration (special price) Carolyn's LinkedIn profile (follow her from here) The 80/20 Principle (my techlaw newsletter) The Inner Circle (my online community for lawyers) Follow and Review: I'd appreciate if you could drop a review over on  Apple Podcasts. It only takes a few seconds and helps spread the word about the podcast. Thanks to the sponsor: Smith.ai Smith.ai is an amazing virtual receptionist service that specializes in working with solo and small law firms. When you hire Smith.ai, you're hiring well-trained, friendly receptionists who can respond to callers in English or Spanish. And they have a special offer for podcast listeners where you can get an extra $100 discount with promo code ERNIE100. Sign up for a risk-free start with a 14-day money-back guarantee now (and learn more) at smith.ai.