Insights

Latest Thinking

— LinkedIn / Field Notes
July 2026Consumption Pricing

Time to start baking consumption pricing readiness into the heart of your AI strategy. I find the crux move is to identify repeatable tasks (not always obvious), then use the LLM to build out a process using a combo of version controlled markdown files and deterministic workflow engines. This takes a while to setup, but pays off very quickly.

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June 2026Open Knowledge Format

Portability of IP, avoiding lock-in and token consumption are three of the hardest questions in legal AI right now. Google's new Open Knowledge Format takes a simple, elegant run at all three, letting firm IP live in plain text files outside any single model provider. Why it matters and what to watch.

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May 2026Leadership Briefing

"Shouldn't we just use Claude?" A 10-page explainer for leadership on what Claude for Legal actually is, where the hosting, audit, security and cost gaps sit, and how to plan a defensible pilot.

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May 2026The SIGNL Principles

The CTO's inbox is a hellscape right now. In-box bolt-ons vs standalone tools, general CoPilots vs practice-specific points, build shops, user-created agents, partner FOMO. Six principles to bring some order to the decision-making.

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May 2026Claude for Legal

Early findings from a review of the claude-for-legal repository. Nothing in isolation was impossible to build pre-announcement. The real story is the governance scaffolding needed to roll this out at scale.

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— Long-form Articles

Deeper Reading

Case Study

How Bristows refreshed its AI strategy to meet the demands of 2026

An independent view of the legal AI market, a firmwide strategy delivered within a working week, and a framework built to outlast any single tool. How SIGNL worked with Bristows LLP, and where the firm is now.

Security · Free White Paper

Moving to a Pessimistic Security Model

Why firms are closing the open-by-default DMS, what a firm has to weigh before it does, and the four-stage route to getting there without disrupting how people work.

MCP · Free Briefing

MCP and the DMS: How MCP Bridges the Information Governance Gap

The new standard that lets AI talk directly to your DMS. Download the presentation slides and white paper on what it means for law firms, and what you need to have in place before you switch it on.

AI Strategy

What AI Readiness Looks Like in 2026

Most people measure AI adoption by counting prompts. The ones making progress measure a lot more. A view on meaningful adoption, the measurement gap and what readiness actually requires across business, people and infrastructure.

Governance

Governance & Data Privacy

AI agents are hungry for your data, and many firms sleepwalk into copying it across multiple systems - breaking security, privacy and audit controls in the process.

Security

Security & Permissions

Most firms' access controls are 20 years old. AI-powered search will present confidential information buried in a misfiled document three practice areas away whether you want to see it or not.

Data Quality

Data Quality & Labelling

Everything is labelled as "DOC" with a generic filename. AI needs content labelled and needs to be told what those labels mean. Without that, it guesses.