Reading Time: 7 minutes
I am a little bit fascinated by the Anthropic-initiated Skills concept. In my mind’s eye, it fixes two of the significant problems with professional use of agentic AI (and generative AI): lack of expertise and lack of re-usability. The gap that I am unsure how to cross is moving from theory
David Whelan
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A Herd of One
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I have been using Mastodon for over three years now and have no regrets. I’m aware of confirmation bias in this matter but it still feels right. I was ready to take the next step, which was to try to run my own Mastodon instance. It’s still early days but I…
Where Does The Time Go?
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 8 minutes
Most people I know are paid for time. It’s an artificial contract. Notionally, I am paid for 40 hours of work a week. There is some expectation that those 40 hours will occur within a specific schedule, like 9am to 5pm. Employers pay me for my time because they have neither…
The Light Touch of Leadership
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I was talking with some colleagues recently about leadership and management. Both had new managers. In one case, the person had joined a new team with a seasoned manager. In the other, an existing team had received a person new to management. They were having very different experiences. None of it…
For Every Searcher, Their Search Engine
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Wither the web search. You may have started putting in a date delimiter of ChatGPT’s arrival as a cutoff for reliable results on the internet. You may have hacked your default browser search to cut out slop. One thing is for sure: web search is not what it was. Thirsty AEO…
It’s Alive! New Law Practice Technology Book
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 7 minutes
“Hey, publisher, I have an idea for a book. It’s called ‘Law Practice Technology.’” Not my most creative pitch, I will confess. It took more than that but I will confess to a certain amount of uncertainty when I decided to see if I could find a publisher for a new…
Purpose Before Product
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 8 minutes
I am a policy skeptic. Which I think is a bit funny because I am (mostly) a rule follower. This can lead to unintended consequences when rules lead me to playing silly buggers but if you want a different outcome, think before you start rule-making. After working at the ABA and…
The Two Speeds of Law Practice Technology
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 9 minutes
It is funny how you can be aware of something but, until you explain it to someone else, it doesn’t really take form. So far this semester, we have been looking at law practice technology from the perspectives of efficiencies: doing things more quickly and more accurately. Now that we’ve hit…
A Smile And A Handshake
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 6 minutes
We are getting some work done, a bit of gardening. It’s landscaping, which is mostly a word that I use when it’s “more gardening than I want to do myself” because, while I love gardening, I’m an incrementalist. A new plant here, a repotted one over there. We are going to…
A Wander Among Web Browsers
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 8 minutes
I have been watching some online colleagues in Denmark engage in a massive withdrawal from US-based technology. #DanmarkSkifter It has encouraged me to continue along this path myself. Years ago I started to spread my internet use across web browsers to try to silo some of their knowledge about me.…
Save It For Later
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 5 minutes
I have been thinking a lot about the resilience of this website. Over time, I have stopped linking to live copies of resources because they disappear. I have been blogging for over 20 years and there are still people looking at posts I did early on where every resource I linked…
My Kingdom For An Index
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 7 minutes
I am coming towards the end of my book project. I am proofing the pages — which is kind of fun, a bit like seeing a movie trailer before it comes out, the words finally constrained by proper page layout — and thinking about the index. It seems common for the…
Teaching Tech
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 8 minutes
I am about one-third of the way through the first run of my law practice technology course. It has been very useful as I am writing the teaching manual for my coursebook (coming out in about 6-8 weeks) and so I’m able to battle test some of the manual’s…
The Back Side of Leadership
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 9 minutes
The chairman of the American law firm, Paul Weiss &c, resigned after his connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein became known. It’s hardly surprising that the first law firm to put its business model before its professional legal ethics during the second Trump Administration was led by someone with questionable…
A Path to Librarianship
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 5 minutes
One of our kids earned a library graduate degree and hit the job market. Just over a year after graduating—and about 10 months actively searching—they have accepted an offer as a cataloger at an academic library. It came soon after my own job search and I was interested to see the…
Through the Shoals of PowerAutomate
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 4 minutes
We are over a quarter of the way through the initial semester of my law practice technology class. Talk about building an airplane while flying it. My book has provided the skeleton and now I’m figuring out what can be accomplished within a 26-hour semester. In order to keep it practical—because…