ICYMI
The legal tools most attorneys trust without question—hourly billing, AI research platforms, a cursory case intake—are also the places where the biggest gaps tend to hide.
This month's Q&As all circle the same uncomfortable truth: the defaults aren't designed to serve you or your clients, they're just what everyone else is doing. One interview will change how you start a research question. Another will make you rethink every case intake where a client mentions their kid. These are worth the 10 minutes.
—Bianca Prieto, editor
The law librarian who stress-tests AI so you don't have to
Jenny R.F.F. Silbiger, State Law Librarian, American Association of Law Libraries
The most useful shift a solo attorney can make in a research conversation isn't asking better questions—it's changing the frame from "find this" to "here's what I'm trying to accomplish." Law librarians are evaluating AI platforms side by side and flagging hallucinations before attorneys build arguments on them, yet most small firm attorneys never think to call one. Public and county law libraries offer this support for free, and you don't have to be in the building to access it.
The billing model that won $60M by aligning firm and client incentives
Maddalena Savary, Partner, Frazier Law, PLLC
Hourly billing doesn't just create friction with clients, it builds an adversarial dynamic into the engagement from day one. Savary uses hybrid fee arrangements, a discounted hourly rate paired with a partial contingency, priced through a structured risk analysis that accounts for likelihood of success, damages range, collectability, settlement dynamics and cost trajectory. The model now covers nearly 35% of the firm's plaintiff-side work and has produced over $60 million in recoveries.
Don’t Miss This
If your client has a website they may already have a children's data compliance problem they don't know about, and the litigation risk has quietly expanded well beyond COPPA. Your clients probably have a children's data problem
When a client mentions homeschooling in passing, the question that shapes everything else isn't logistical—it's why they're doing it, and a Florida attorney explains how that answer changes representation across family law, abuse and neglect, and special education cases. This detail in your client's case isn't background noise
You’re all caught up!
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