The delegation problem.

There's a useful framework for what it takes to work well with AI, the 4D framework, developed through a research collaboration between Professor Rick Dakan of Ringling College of Art and Design and Professor Joseph Feller of University College Cork, and set out in Anthropic's AI Fluency work. It names four competencies: delegation, description, discernment, and diligence.

In short: delegation is deciding what work goes to a person and what goes to the model; description is communicating clearly what you want the AI to do; discernment is judging whether what comes back is actually good; and diligence is using it responsibly, transparently, accountably, and within the rules. Three of the four are skills a firm can build with practice. The first is a different kind of problem.

Delegation is judgment, not technique

Delegation asks which parts of legal work should stay with a lawyer, which can be handed to a model, and how the two should pass work back and forth. Get it wrong and you either automate the work that needed judgment, or keep doing by hand the work a model does better, and either way, the economics don't move. Get it right and the shape of the work changes.

This is the part most firms can't answer from the inside, because the answer isn't general. It depends on your matter types, your risk tolerance, how your partners are compensated, and where your associates learn their craft. Two firms with the same tools should draw the line in different places. There is no default that fits yours.

What firms actually outsource

Deciding what to delegate is, in practice, the work firms hand to us. We map how the firm actually practices, draw the line between human and machine where it belongs for your firm specifically, and build the process around that line. Description, discernment, and diligence then have something to work with, a considered division of labor, not a guess.

The tools will keep getting better at the other three. They will describe more fluently and produce work that is harder to fault. Delegation, knowing what to ask them to do in the first place, and what to keep for the people, stays a human decision. It's the one worth getting right before anything else.

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