Attorneys Working with Claude: A Hands-On Guide for Legal Practice

Michael Showalter, Founder | Showalter PLLC

Michael founded Showalter PLLC to deliver elite appellate and complex-litigation representation at a fraction of the traditional price by building the practice around an AI-augmented workflow. Operating as the AI-savvy senior lawyer at the helm, Michael uses AI as his secretary, librarian, paralegal, and team of associates, replacing the layered staffing model that drives conventional firm costs. Every matter is flat-fee, every citation is verified against primary sources, and client data is always protected. The AI Firm Index, a third-party directory that scores firms on AI integration, describes Showalter PLLC as a credible, early-stage entrant worth watching.

• Education & Credentials

Michael earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, graduating in the top 10% of his class, where he served as a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan, awarded with Highest Honors. Michael clerked for Judge Diane Sykes on the Seventh Circuit and for Judge Dabney Friedrich on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

• Recognition & Leadership

Michael’s social media writing on law and AI has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of readers, making him a visible voice on how technology is reshaping legal practice. A Gibson Dunn appellate partner described him as among the best legal writers they had worked with at the firm. A D.C. Circuit panel praised his oral argument in its written opinion, and his amicus brief in SEC v. Jarkesy advanced arguments later taken up by Justice Neil Gorsuch in a concurrence.

• Professional Involvement

Michael is an active law-and-AI scholar, with articles on the subject published in the Notre Dame Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, and the SMU Law Review. His broader scholarship includes ten published or forthcoming law review articles with journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and George Mason Law Review, along with writing in Law360 and Bloomberg Law. Michael has taught constitutional law at Catholic University and presented at law schools and legal organizations.

• Experience

Michael has drafted merits and certiorari-stage briefs at the U.S. Supreme Court and dozens of federal appellate briefs spanning constitutional, administrative, and complex commercial litigation, and at Gibson Dunn helped lead a team enforcing an international arbitration award of roughly $500 million, including fraudulent-transfer claims against judgment debtors. He currently serves as lead counsel for a lender in a Virginia state-court action and sits on a trial team before the Delaware Court of Chancery. Two years out of law school, Michael defeated Microsoft pro se before the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

SESSION 1 – How Claude Actually Works, and Where It Fails | 1:00pm – 1:20pm

Understand what Claude is, how it differs from a search engine and other AI tools, and the limitations that matter in practice: hallucination, bias, and output variability that can produce a confident but wrong answer.

SESSION 2 – Choosing the Right Account and Reading the Terms | 1:20pm – 1:40pm

Compare individual, team, and enterprise tiers to pick what fits your practice, and review the vendor’s data-handling terms so you know what you’re agreeing to before client information ever touches the tool.

SESSION 3 – Confidentiality and Technology-Competence Duties | 1:40pm – 2:00pm

Meet your ethical obligations head-on: opt out of training, understand what the tool retains, apply anonymization and hypothetical framing, and recognize where attorneys over-restrict themselves and lose value for no real protection.

BREAK | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

SESSION 4 – Building a Reusable Legal Workspace | 2:10pm – 2:20pm

Configure standing instructions, saved skills, commands, and reference documents so a single trigger runs a multi-step task end-to-end and keeps output consistent across a matter or an entire practice area.

SESSION 5 – Sharp Prompts and a Disciplined Verification Workflow | 2:20pm – 2:30pm

Write legal prompts that get usable results, then apply a review-and-verification process — including citation-verification protocols — so nothing leaves your desk on the strength of an unchecked output.

SESSION 6 – High-Value Use Cases Across Your Practice | 2:30pm – 2:50pm

Put Claude to work where it pays off: legal research and case-law screening, drafting, client-facing work, business development, and internal operations — concrete applications that span practice areas rather than abstract promises.

SESSION 7 – A Sustainable, Human-in-the-Loop Adoption Plan | 2:50pm – 3:10pm

Leave with a realistic plan that keeps a lawyer in control at every step, so adoption sticks, quality holds, and AI becomes a durable part of how your practice runs rather than a one-time experiment.