Field note
Legal · Desk 04
Useful work is narrow: first-pass issue spotting on a document you already understand, a chronology, a deposition outline. Anything that invents a case or a statute is a career event. Claude’s long context is the right shape for a brief you will still read. A “legal copilot” that answers from the open web is not.
Privilege and client files do not belong in a consumer chat. If the firm cannot say where the prompt went, do not paste the contract. Start with a closed workspace and a named reviewer on every generated paragraph that might leave the building.
Measure hours on one matter type — NDAs, engagement letters, discovery indexes — for a month. Do not buy a practice-management suite because it shipped a chat pane.
Anything that invents a case or a statute is a career event.
How we read this categoryPrivilege is not a productivity setting. If you cannot say where the prompt went, do not paste the contract.
Ground every citation. If you cannot show the source, it does not ship.
