Otto's Notebook
Founding cohort — 5 firms only

Save 5–10 hours a week in your small firm in 30 days with safe AI workflows.

I'm looking for 5 solo & small-firm lawyers to become founding AI clients. We'll put Claude or ChatGPT to work on billing, email, and intake — without gambling with client confidentiality.

I'm a tech transactions attorney of 25 years, using these tools daily in my own practice.

Normally $1,500 — Waived for the founding cohort

Fit check

Who this is for

You're a solo or small firm (1–10 lawyers) in the U.S.

You're drowning in billing, email, intake, and admin — and the backlog never clears.

You're serious about AI but cautious — confidentiality, ethics, and vendor terms actually matter to you.

You want time back without hiring another paralegal or swapping practice-management software.

Why now

The problem

Most solos and small firms are stuck in the same trap: billable work all day, then another two hours every night on invoices, email triage, intake forms, and short emails that don't really need a senior lawyer's brain — just their time.

Meanwhile, every CLE, podcast, and LinkedIn post is shouting about AI. So you try a few ChatGPT prompts between calls, get a mediocre result, and quietly wonder whether you just leaked client information to a model somewhere.

Random prompts aren't a system. Three to five real workflows running quietly inside the tools you already use — that's a system.

The work

What you get in the 30-day sprint

Outcome target: 5–10 hours back, every week, on a 30-day timeline. Built around the subscription you probably already have.

AI Safety & Setup Call

We pick the right tool for your firm (Claude or ChatGPT), lock down account settings so your prompts aren't used for training, and walk through a plain-English confidentiality and ethics checklist you can actually defend.

Time-Leak & Workflow Design Session

We map your top 3–5 time drains across billing, email, intake, and drafting — then decide which one or two are genuinely good places to start, and which need to stay human.

Custom Workflow Build-Out

I build the reusable, drilled-to-your-real-tasks AI workflows: intake summaries, client email drafts, invoice summaries, document review prep — and connect them to Outlook or Google Workspace where it makes sense.

Team Training & Written AI Protocol

A live Zoom training for you and your team. If you have one paralegal, a short written AI Usage Protocol covering what's allowed, what's not, and how to handle client data. Plain, useful — give it to new hires.

The deal

Founding client terms — learning over earning

Normal price

$1,500

$0 for founding cohort

Five firms only. Once the cohort closes, the next round is paid.

The fee is waived for the first 5 firms because I want real-world feedback before charging full price. In exchange, I'm asking for:

  • Show up to 5 calls over the 30 days.
  • Actually use the workflows in your real practice — not just nod along through the demo.
  • Give me a short, specific feedback note on what did and didn't work.
  • If we're genuinely happy at the end of the sprint, an unsolicited case study or short quote I can share.

Light guarantee

Even though it's free, I'll run this like a fully paid client. If by day 30 it doesn't feel clearly valuable, tell me exactly why — so I can fix it for round 2. No paying client gets less effort.

About

By a lawyer, for lawyers

I've practiced tech transactions law for 25 years — software licensing, SaaS, data, vendor and confidentiality terms. The same DPAs and acceptable-use policies I negotiate for clients are the ones AI vendors publish on their own sites. Reading them is a habit.

I'm not a "prompt engineer." I'm someone who is comfortable saying, as a lawyer, using Claude and ChatGPT in my own daily practice, with the same anxieties about confidentiality, work product, and client trust that you have.

That's the lens for everything in this sprint.

At a glance

  • 25 years in tech transactions
  • Daily Claude & ChatGPT user
  • Reads vendor DPAs for fun
  • Built for U.S. solos & small firms

FAQ

Questions you're probably asking

Founding cohort

5 spots. Zero fee. One focused 30-day sprint to get AI working in your firm.

If you're a US solo or small-firm lawyer who wants one thing actually working — without having to be the one figuring it out at 10pm — this is the cohort to join.

We talk first to confirm a fit.