This exclusive interview with Kevin Tampone originally appeared in Syracuse.com’s Business Matters newsletter. Click here to sign up to receive Business Matters.
The debate over AI and its place in business is churning across the country and certainly in Central New York. How do I use it? What are the risks? How do we train everyone? Workers, managers and owners at companies everywhere are confronting those questions and many, many more.
One of Syracuse’s most prominent law firms, Barclay Damon, has a targeted approach, particularly when it comes to how new attorneys use AI. The firm allows younger lawyers to use tools like Claude, but only after they’ve worked on a problem the “old-fashioned” way, said Doug Nash, a partner at the firm and chair of its AI Ad Hoc Committee. Young attorneys also have to disclose their use of AI to supervisors, including the tools they used and the prompts.
Barclay Damon's strategy has been attracting attention, including from publications like Fast Company.
I talked with Nash for insights. You’ll only see this interview here in Business Matters.
Note: Transcript has been edited and condensed.
How did you arrive at this policy?
We're not a firm that wants to disappear in 10 years. When I retire, whenever that is, I want someone to inherit the firm and I want that to be someone who's a really good, talented lawyer. And so how is it we're going to train those lawyers? Because right now, you know, [AI is] all very new to everyone, including clients.
Why was that right approach for you?
We as a firm, I think we tend to be very practical and practically speaking, it was going to get used anyway. And so why not build it into the policy in a way that is professional and can be monitored and supervised and is embraced, rather than it's something they're doing surreptitiously.
How do you use AI in your work on a day-to-day basis?
I've been very careful when I've used it because I never put anything that's confidential into it. I use it to sort of help think through things. I'm too set in my ways to let Claude do the writing for me at this point. Like, if I have trouble figuring how to say something, I might talk to Claude about it, but I want to write it. So right now, I want Claude to sort of help me, give me the information I need to write it. It's like a research assistant at this point for me.
What is AI going to do for us? What’s the biggest perk?
It’ll free everyone up to think more critically about the information that's important to whatever job they're doing and to exercise better judgment in doing it. So it should result in better outcomes because people will be freed up to think about what it is they're doing, rather than I gotta get the spreadsheet prepared. Now, spreadsheet’s done in four minutes. Now I get to think about the data, analyze it critically and really understand what the data means.