In “The 80/20 Principle,” Ernie Svenson demystifies technology and introduces tools that improve your workday. This time, he explains his switch to Claude AI, and why its Projects and CoWork features are worth solo and small-firm lawyers’ time.
Table of contents
- It Started With My Files: The CoWork Advantage
- The Moment I Knew: Building Legal Courses with Claude
- Then I Started Training Claude to ‘Speak Lawyer’
- The Lawyers In My Community Are Noticing Too
- Skills: The Turbocharged SOP
- What This Means for You
- One Last Thing About Claude AI for Lawyers
- More From Ernie Svenson and the 80/20 Principle
I wasn’t unhappy with ChatGPT.
That’s the part that surprises people when I tell them I switched. I started using it when it first launched. Over the past few years, I’ve put in serious time training it. It knew my voice, my audience, my preferences. I tried Claude when Anthropic launched it, liked what I saw, but stuck with ChatGPT.
Switching felt like starting over. And I wasn’t ready to do that. But then something changed my thinking entirely — and it wasn’t about writing quality.
It Started With My Files: The CoWork Advantage
The trigger was Claude’s CoWork feature, which lets you work directly with files sitting on your own computer. No uploading. No copy-pasting. Just point Claude at a folder and work.
That might sound like a small convenience. It isn’t.
For lawyers, your work lives in documents — briefs, contracts, templates, client notes. The ability to work with those files in place, without exporting or reformatting them, changes how AI fits into your day. It stops feeling like a separate tool you have to visit and starts feeling like a colleague who has access to the same files you do.
That was enough to get me experimenting more seriously.
The Moment I Knew: Building Legal Courses with Claude
My real proof of concept came when I used Claude — combining CoWork with a structured Project — to build a series of online courses about AI for lawyers in my community to help them learn Claude, ChatGPT, NotebookLM and Perplexity.
Each course took me about two and a half hours. Start to finish. And they were good. Claude even generated a 10-question quiz for each section of the course — and the quizzes were exceptional. That matters because going through a course isn’t the same as learning it. Being tested on the material is what makes it stick.
I’d built courses before using other tools. The difference wasn’t marginal. It was the kind of difference that makes you reassess what’s possible with AI — and with Claude specifically.
Now, obviously, most lawyers aren’t building courses. But substitute “client onboarding assistant,” “settlement claims negotiating assistant,” “deposition prep assistant,” or “contract review assistant,” and the same logic applies. Complex cognitive work that used to take days can happen in hours when Claude has the right context and you’ve set up the project correctly.
Then I Started Training Claude to ‘Speak Lawyer’
Once I saw what was now possible, I focused on pushing it further.
Training Claude — giving it your writing style, your preferences, your typical workflows — is straightforward. Claude will ask you for what it needs and internalize what it learns. My results improved instantly, and shockingly.
That was my epiphany. I hadn’t switched because ChatGPT failed me. I switched because I finally saw what I’d been missing. Claude is much better all around, so I’m sticking with it.
The Lawyers In My Community Are Noticing Too
I’m not the only one making this shift. In my AI Lab — a weekly workshop for solo and small-firm lawyers — more and more members are either switching to Claude or reaching for it first when they need to write something. The consensus is the same: the writing is better, and the workflow fits how lawyers actually work.
If you haven’t started with either tool yet, my honest advice is to begin with Claude. The learning curve is gentler than it looks, and you’ll build better habits from the start.
Skills: The Turbocharged SOP
One of the most useful things I’ve discovered in Claude is the ability to build your own custom skills — and to have Claude help you build them.
Think of a skill as a turbocharged SOP. You’re creating a reusable set of instructions that tells Claude exactly how to handle a specific task. The difference from a traditional SOP is that Claude helps you write it, you use it, and then Claude helps you refine it over time based on what’s working.
My most recent example: I had Claude interview me about my background, my preferences and how I work. I told it to ask me 40 questions. It did.
All I had to do was select the right answers — I didn’t have to think of what to include or how to phrase anything. The result was a master skill that now sits in my top-level prompt and shapes everything Claude does for me.
It was surprisingly, shockingly easy.
For lawyers, the applications are obvious. Client intake. Matter management. Drafting preferences. Billing workflows. Any repeatable task you do more than twice is a candidate for a skill. And unlike a traditional SOP that sits in a binder and gets ignored, this one actually gets used — because it’s built into the tool itself.
What This Means for You
You don’t have to abandon tools that are working. But it’s worth asking whether “working” is the same as “optimal.”
If you’re a solo or small-firm lawyer doing serious document work, Claude’s Projects and CoWork features are worth your time. Set one up around a real workflow — not a test, an actual matter or process — and see what happens.
The gap between what AI can do and what most lawyers are getting from it is still significant. Closing that gap starts with the right setup.
One Last Thing About Claude AI for Lawyers
The first draft of this article was written using Claude on my smartphone and took less than 20 minutes. I just dictated my thoughts using WisprFlow, which yielded an almost finished piece in a fraction of the time it would have taken me otherwise.
No blank page agony. No struggling to create a clear structure. Just a relaxed conversation that turned into solid content.
So here’s the most important takeaway. Claude isn’t just a tool. It’s a powerful thinking partner that can help you do better work, faster and more enjoyably.
More From Ernie Svenson and the 80/20 Principle
Loom for Lawyers: Why You Should Be Creating Shareable Videos
Top 8 Tech Tools for Solo and Small Firm Lawyers to End the Chaos
AI Tools for Lawyers: Why You Shouldn’t Stick to Just One
Our Fingers Can’t Keep Up With AI
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