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Field Note: Materials from NACBA's "Me, Myself & AI" Webinar · AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Practical, no-nonsense guidance to help attorneys put AI power to work in their practice right now.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want to take about five minutes today to tell my listeners, and really mainly the consumer bankruptcy lawyer listeners, about something that I think is genuinely worth your time.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Back in August, NACPA, National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, put together a program called Me, Myself, and AI, featuring four lawyers who, really, not coincidentally, have all now appeared on this podcast: Jenny Doling, Tara Salinas, Chad Van Horn, and Matt McCune.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: I asked NACPA for permission to put the written materials from that program on the AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers website, and they said yes.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: So they are there.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can download them.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Links in the show notes.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I really encourage you to do that because these are not typical CLE materials where you get 75 pages of PowerPoint slides that made perfect sense while somebody was talking and are almost useless six months later.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's stuff in these materials that you can actually use.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you a quick tour.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, Jenny Doling's materials may be the mother load.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Jenny gives you a 30-prompt consumer bankruptcy AI prompt library.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And these aren't generic prompts like draft a letter to my clients.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're organized around an actual bankruptcy workflow, intake and client communication, means testing and eligibility, schedules and petition preparation, chapter 13 plan work, trustee issues, 341 preparation, reaffirmations, exemptions.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are the kind of things bankruptcy lawyers actually do.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: But Jenny goes much further than prompting.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: She shows you the AI skills she has actually built for her firm: a pay stub analyzer, a bank statement analyzer, a debt analyzer, a tax return analyzer.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Her bank statement analyzer, for example, produces an Excel worksheet analyzing income, spending, transfers, cash app activity, and unusual transactions, plus a separate internal attorney work product memo identifying things that need attention.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Her tax return analyzer looks for things like undisclosed businesses, brokerage accounts, real estate, and refunds.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's much more.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Document renaming, missing document analysis, email attachment organization, even a fee quote builder.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is a glimpse of what an AI-enabled bankruptcy practice can actually look like.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Tara Salinas comes at the problem from almost the opposite direction.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Her message is essentially stop trying to build an AI-enabled bankruptcy practice.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just solve one annoying problem.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Her materials include a terrific 30-minute exercise called your first closed file.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Take a closed Chapter 7 case, upload six months of bank statements, have the AI first inventory what it received, then analyze the statements, then compare what it found with what you found when you originally handled the case.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: She even gives you the prompts.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Tara's larger point is one that I really love.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need a technology strategy, you don't need a committee, you don't need to redesign your firm.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you can explain an assignment to a good paralegal, you can start experimenting with AI.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's Chad Van Horn.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Chad focuses on moving from prompts to skills.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think his distinction is important.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: A prompt asks AI to do something once.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: A skill is the written procedure that tells AI how your firm wants that task done every time.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Chad breaks a skill down into four very simple pieces.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: When should you use it?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: What information does it need?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: What steps should it follow?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what does good work look like, including the guardrails?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: His examples include petition quality control and a pleading reviewer that checks things like the code and rule citations, local rules, the judges' procedures, negative notice language, service lists, and proposed orders.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I particularly like Chad's advice about correcting AI.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you've corrected it twice, stop arguing.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Fix the instructions.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, Matt McCune gives you perhaps the simplest roadmap of all: voice, video, software.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: For voice, Matt demonstrates whisper flow, speaking to AI rather than typing.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: For video, he uses HeyGen to turn something he explains once into reusable client communication.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then he makes the jump that would have sounded almost crazy a couple of years ago.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Build your own software.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of asking, what can my software do?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Matt asks, what do I want my practice to do?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then he uses AI to start building around that answer.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you've really got four different entry points here.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Jenny shows you what a deeply AI-enabled bankruptcy workflow can become.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Tara shows you how ridiculously small the first step can be.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Chad shows you how to turn what works into a repeatable process.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And Matt shows you how far you can eventually take it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And one more thing.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to thank NACPA for allowing me to make these materials available to listeners.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And NACPA did something else that I thought was really nice.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you are a bankruptcy lawyer who is not currently a NACPA member, they have given listeners of this podcast a special code for$50 off a new NACPA membership.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: The code is NACPA50AI.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's NACPA50AI.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: The offer expires October 31st, 2026.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'll put the information along with the materials on the website and in the show notes.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll add my own completely unsolicited endorsement here.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've been involved with NACPA for a long time.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: The first NACPA event I went to was in San Antonio in 2012.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Their educational materials are consistently some of the most practical bankruptcy resources I encounter.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And these AI materials are particularly good because they're not about AI in the abstract.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're about bankruptcy lawyers doing bankruptcy work with better tools.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Go download them.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not already an ACPA member, take 50 bucks off the membership and join.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is Ron Tresher.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a Field Note for AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll see you next time.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today's episode of AI Tools for Practicing Lawyers.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.