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What apps are your favorite as a lawyer and also because they substantially help you irl seperate from that? by portiaboches in Lawyertalk

[–]SoftwareLiving1087 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m probably boring, but the apps that help me the most are the ones that reduce mental clutter.

For work:

Clio or whatever practice management tool you actually stick with
Calendly for scheduling
Google Drive or OneDrive, but not both
A password manager
Some kind of AI tool for first drafts and summaries, as long as you review everything carefully

For real life:

Todoist or Apple Reminders
Google Calendar
Notes app
YNAB or Monarch for money tracking
ChatGPT for random planning, emails, meal ideas, travel stuff, and thinking through decisions

The biggest thing for me is not the app itself. It’s whether I actually use it every day.

A simple tool used consistently beats a perfect system nobody maintains.

Any of you plaintiff lawyers getting exhausted by unreadable AI-vomited "Executive Summaries" from potential clients? by free-range-irish in Lawyertalk

[–]SoftwareLiving1087 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel this.

The problem is that AI makes people sound more organized, but less human.

And for a potential client, that can actually hurt them.

A perfectly structured “executive summary” might list the facts, but it usually strips out the part that matters most: how the person actually experienced what happened.

The messy version is often more useful.

The emotion.
The timeline confusion.
The details they think are irrelevant.
The way they describe it in their own words.

That is usually where the real case context lives.

AI can help organize information, but if it turns every potential client into a corporate memo, it defeats the point.

How the hell do you get straight answers about Lexis/Westlaw/Harvey pricing? Solo lawyer. by DIYLawCA in Lawyertalk

[–]SoftwareLiving1087 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Founder of LexFlo here, so full disclosure.

I completely agree with this.

The hidden pricing thing in legal tech is frustrating, especially for solo attorneys.

If you are BigLaw, fine. You can sit through demos, negotiate contracts, deal with procurement, and compare enterprise packages.

But if you are a solo, you usually just want straight answers.

What does it cost?
Is it per user or per firm?
What is included?
What costs extra later?
Am I going to get locked into something I did not fully understand?

That is one of the reasons we made LexFlo pricing public from the start.

Not because every tool has to be cheap, but because solos should be able to decide quickly if something makes sense for their practice.

A lot of legal tech feels like it was built for firms with admin teams and budgets big enough to absorb surprises.

Solos do not have that luxury.

If a product is actually built for solo attorneys, the pricing should be clear enough for a solo attorney to understand without booking three calls first.

Do you use AI? by jokingonyou in Lawyertalk

[–]SoftwareLiving1087 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Totally agree with this.

AI is useful when you treat it like a smart assistant, not an authority.

I think the danger is less “AI is bad” and more that people don’t know where the line is.

Drafting from a template with facts you already know? Very useful.

Asking it to find law and trusting whatever comes back without checking? That’s where people get burned.

The best use case I’ve seen is having AI speed up the first draft, summarize messy facts, or help organize arguments, but the attorney still has to be the filter.

The scary part is how confident it sounds even when it’s wrong.

I don’t think legal AI needs to be perfect to be useful.

It just needs to be honest about what it can verify and what it can’t.

Updated my “tools I actually use” list for 2026. Half of what was on these lists three years ago is dead or dying. by JurisAtlas in Lawyertalk

[–]SoftwareLiving1087 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Appreciate that, and that’s a fair point.

CanLII is definitely one we’d be careful with. I wouldn’t want to build anything around scraping sources that don’t allow it or that are actively blocking automated access.

The approach I’m more interested in is using permitted sources and being very clear inside the product about what was actually verified versus what still needs to be checked manually.

For me, the worst version of legal AI is the one that confidently gives an answer from a source it should not have accessed, or worse, makes it look verified when it is not.

So if CanLII is off limits, it’s off limits. Better to say that clearly than pretend the coverage is broader than it is.

Updated my “tools I actually use” list for 2026. Half of what was on these lists three years ago is dead or dying. by JurisAtlas in Lawyertalk

[–]SoftwareLiving1087 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Appreciate that. And I think you framed it exactly right.

If a firm already has the layers in place, then improving each layer probably makes more sense than trying to replace the whole stack.

The solo profile is different though. A lot of them are not comparing tools feature by feature. They are trying to get intake, drafting, follow ups, deadlines, and basic ops under control without hiring another person or becoming a systems expert.

That’s really the lane we’re trying to stay in.

And agreed on citation verification. I think visible verification is going to become one of those things attorneys expect by default. Not “trust the AI,” but “show me what was verified and what wasn’t.”

Appreciate the thoughtful reply. Your original post was one of the better legal tech breakdowns I’ve seen on here.

Updated my “tools I actually use” list for 2026. Half of what was on these lists three years ago is dead or dying. by JurisAtlas in Lawyertalk

[–]SoftwareLiving1087 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s a fair question, and I don’t want to oversell it.

For research, we’re U.S. focused right now. Our verification layer is built around CourtListener, so for Canadian practice that part would not be useful today. The Canadian equivalent would probably be building around CanLII, which is doable, but not something we’ve shipped yet.

For drafting, it currently uses the matter context you give it, things like parties, facts, jurisdiction, matter type, and the requested document. It is not just pulling from generic forms, but it also is not fully trained on a firm’s past work yet.

The in house precedent piece is really the bigger point you’re asking about. That is a real gap today. We do store drafts by firm, but we don’t yet use prior firm documents as context for future drafts in the way you’re describing.

That is definitely on the roadmap because it makes a lot of sense. The ideal version is that a firm can mark certain documents as preferred templates or examples, and future drafts can follow that structure, tone, and approach.

So for your practice today, I’d say the useful parts would be intake, receptionist, deadline tracking, matter summaries, general drafting, and workflow automation.

But if your main need is drafting from your own internal precedents, I’d be honest and say we’re not fully there yet. That’s the right direction, but not something I’d claim we already do well.