I’m not Kirkland. I’m not a midlevel firm. I’m a solo attorney who works with individual clients, many of whom spend $2,500 on an entire matter, if I’m lucky—not $2,500 an hour.

I don’t have $500 million to spend on custom AI tools. I’m bootstrapped. I have limited means to raise money. What I have is what I earn, what I save, and the support of my family.

But I also have supportive family, supportive friends, Claude Opus, and access to the best legal technology on the market—technology I can embed directly into AI-native apps I’m building myself.

I have no illusions about the legal-tech market. Mega firms have their own approach to AI and legal technology, and I appreciate what they are building at that scale. But I also have my own approach, my own focus, and my own clients to serve.

What excites me most about the latest AI tools is not some fantasy of replacing lawyers. It is how they can help lawyers like me practice law better, serve clients better, analyze problems more deeply, and build products that were previously out of reach.

I use AI for legal work, logical analysis, client communication, product development, systems design, and the everyday problem-solving that a solo practice demands. I do not handle just one narrow slice of the legal process. I manage the full arc of the work: from customer relationships, intake, issue spotting, research, drafting, strategy, execution, and follow-through, all the way to a finished matter.

That is the reality of being a solo attorney. You have to be multiskilled. You have to be adaptable. You have to understand the client, the law, the business, the technology, and the final deliverable.

Even as a solo attorney, I want to leverage AI as a specific tool to my advantage—not fear it, not ignore it, and not let it pass me by. For me, AI is not an abstract debate. It is something to use, master, and implement in ways that strengthen my practice, improve my products, and expand what I can build.

The latest AI tools have expanded what I can do, where I can do it, and how fast I can learn. They have given me something back that I did not expect: the ability to go outside, take walks, go to dinner, and keep moving my legal practice and product development forward without being chained to a desk.

I am building for this AI-native era in the legal landscape because I have to—and because I can.