AI Is My Junior Associate

When people ask how I use AI in my practice, the honest answer is like a junior associate. Useful, supervised, and never making decisions on its own.

Practically, that means AI handles first passes on contract review. Flagging deviations, surfacing provisions worth a closer look, identifying issues I should address. It handles research, finding relevant cases and regulations faster than I can, which I then read and verify. And it handles some of the operational overhead of running a practice: templates, intake, summaries. On each of these, I'm the final layer.

The distinction that matters most to me is not what AI does but how it runs. I don't use consumer AI products for client work. Everything I use for client matters runs on API access with commercial terms. This means none of my inputs or outputs are used to train future models. That's not a technical detail. When you share a contract with me, or a deal structure, or a business problem, those details shouldn't flow anywhere they don't need to go.

Every output gets reviewed. That's not fine print, it's the whiole point. The value of this model is that someone with judgment sits above it. Me. AI can draft the memo. I decide whether the memo is right.

For clients, this means routine tasks move faster. For substantive decisions, nothing changes. That's still my work, my analysis, and my judgment on the line.

— James