It’s been virtually 1 / 4 of a century since I nursed my final child. However I can nonetheless recall that particular model of frustration that solely mother and father who apply perceive.
You’re awake. You’re alert. Your mind is firing on all cylinders. You lastly have a stretch of downtime however you’ll be able to’t use your palms!!!
Perhaps you’re nursing a child mid-brief however your one-finger pecking on the pc keyboard can’t sustain along with your ideas. Or possibly you’re idling in a faculty pickup line for 40 minutes, caught behind a minivan with nowhere to go. Or frantically chopping up greens and sauteing un-defrosted meat in an effort to get dinner on the desk in half-hour.
Was once your choices have been to scroll social media and possibly like a few posts.
However AI opens up a complete new world of productiveness for fogeys.
Even if you happen to can’t sort, you’ll be able to nonetheless assume. You possibly can nonetheless hear and take up data. You possibly can nonetheless communicate. You possibly can nonetheless delegate. And if you are able to do these issues, you’ll be able to produce significant work in an AI age.
Put Circumstances on Audio
Struggling to maintain updated in your instances or new court docket rulings? Instruments like Google NotebookLM allow you to add case paperwork — from complaints, motions, deposition transcripts, contracts, or case regulation and generate structured summaries that may be delivered as audio. Your case file turns into a non-public podcast.
For the busy father or mother, which means listening by earbuds as a substitute of squinting at your telephone to learn filings. Immediately, a 45-minute drive to highschool and wait within the pickup lane morphs into substantive case evaluation. That’s not idle time. It’s strategic preparation — and it’s billable too!
Rework Ideas Into Content material
I’ve written earlier than in regards to the value of voice as a attorneys’ productiveness instrument in an AI period. However for working mother and father, voice is a bona fide hands-free superpower. Simply change on an AI-powered recording machine like Plaud.AI or an app like Granola.AI in your telephone, and you may spew out something from tough drafts of LinkedIn posts to stream-of-conscious notes for structuring a reply temporary or a custody settlement. As soon as the infant is down or the youngsters are occupied, simply plop the transcript into your AI platform and ask it to transform your tough ideas into polished copy.
Function-play
Perhaps you could have an argument arising in court docket or a clumsy negotiation a few wage improve. In the event you’ve bought an AI app in your telephone, you can provide it some background, then ask it to role-play the choose or your boss and begin the argument or dialog. You possibly can even ask AI to rank your efficiency and offer you suggestions.
Let the Agent Deal with the Desk Work
In the event you choose to present your youngsters full focus, contemplate AI brokers. AI brokers can do the desk work whilst you’re away from the desk. For instance, Anthropic’s Cowork, constructed into the Claude desktop app, enables you to level Claude at a folder and describe what you want — manage case information with a constant naming conference, examine three professional reviews in a Phrase doc, pull knowledge from a spreadsheet right into a abstract memo or shopper replace to your evaluation. It breaks the duty into steps, executes them, and delivers completed output. Via connectors, it may well even attain into Google Drive and Gmail to drag context by itself. You step away, deal with bedtime or the drive house from gymnastics, and are available again to tidied-up information or a primary draft. It’s the sort of work that has to get executed however now, you don’t must be the one executing it.
This Isn’t About Optimizing Parenthood
Although I’d have enthusiastically availed myself of AI instruments back in the day, I don’t imply to counsel that each pickup line or nursing session must be milked for content material (pun supposed!). Some moments are merely for chilling or being current for the lullaby, the backseat dialog about your little one’s day, or the sound of silence.
My level isn’t to encourage use of AI to show parenthood right into a productiveness hack. As an alternative, AI is a solution to reinforce what all of us working mother and father, significantly mothers, already know: that significant work doesn’t all the time occur at a desk.
For too lengthy, the authorized career has handled bodily presence as a proxy for seriousness. However pondering is figure. Technique is figure. Prep is figure. And now, with brokers that may execute in your directions whilst you’re away, even the executive grind doesn’t require you to be chained to a display screen. With AI, whereas life occurs, severe lawyering can occur too.
Carolyn Elefant is among the nation’s most acknowledged advocates for solo and small agency attorneys. She based MyShingle.com in 2002, the longest-running weblog for solo practitioners, the place she has printed hundreds of articles, assets, and guides on beginning, operating, and rising unbiased regulation practices. She is the creator of Solo by Selection, broadly thought to be the definitive handbook for launching and sustaining a regulation apply, and has spoken at numerous bar occasions and authorized conferences on know-how, innovation, and regulatory reform that impacts solos and smalls. Elefant additionally develops sensible instruments just like the AI Teach-In to assist small corporations undertake AI and she or he persistently champions reforms to degree the enjoying discipline for unbiased attorneys. Alongside this work, she runs the Regulation Workplaces of Carolyn Elefant, a nationwide vitality and regulatory apply that handles selective advanced, high-stakes issues.
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