Your AI wants you to tone it down. Seven ways to say no.

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The tone-it-down test

My favourite, so it goes first.

Ask AI to make your work safer, more professional, more "appropriate". Everything it cuts is your brand, so put it back.

I'm pasting the opening of our latest pitch to [client]. Make it safer, more professional and more appropriate for a law firm. Then list every word, detail and story you cut, and tell me why you cut each one. [Paste it here.]

If the machine took out the war story and the line that made the client laugh, put both straight back in. If it cut nothing at all, that's your answer too.

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The beige detector

Ask the machine for the average answer first, so you know what to cut.

Write the partner bio a typical UK law firm would publish for a [practice area] partner with [number] years' experience. Make it as standard as you can.

Put it next to your real one and cut every line of yours the machine wrote too. If you can't tell them apart, your clients can't either.

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The rehearsal

Courage comes easier when you've already heard the no. Let AI play the managing partner who says it.

You're the managing partner of a UK law firm, and you think marketing spend is a luxury. I'm about to ask you for budget for [idea]. Give me your five hardest objections, in the words you'd use in the meeting. Then tell me which one would really stop you.

Answer each one out loud before the real meeting. I do this all the time. It's the only managing partner who'll give you an hour on a Sunday night without billing for it.

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The dare list

Ask for fifty options before your coffee's ready, then ask which ones nobody else in law would dare use.

Give me fifty subject lines for our client update on [new rule or ruling]. Then pick the five no other UK law firm would dare send, and tell me what makes each one a risk.

Choose one of the five. The subject line can be brave. The facts underneath stay lawyer-tight.

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Ten times too much

Ask what your idea would look like if it were ten times too much.

This is our plan for [client event, campaign or report]. Show me three versions that are ten times too much. Go as far as you like. Then tell me one thing from each that a sensible partner might still sign off. [Paste the plan here.]

You won't run the version with the marching band. You'll steal the idea hiding inside it.

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The odds

Ask the machine for your odds, then decide to do it anyway. The delusion is your choice.

We want [client] on our books, and we've never done a thing for them. Give me our honest odds of winning their work at the next panel review, the three biggest reasons we'll lose, and what would have to be true for us to win. Use only what I've told you and what's public. Don't invent numbers; if you'd need something to judge it, ask me.

Now you know what you're up against. Go anyway, and take that last list with you. I'm a big believer in a healthy dose of delusion. With a to-do list, it's a strategy.

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Fuck-it energy

I let the machine have my Tuesdays. The energy you save is the energy you spend being too much.

I'm pasting our notes, matter list and client feedback for the [practice area] directory submission. Put them into [Legal 500 or Chambers]'s template, which I've pasted below. Flag what's missing, and list the questions I still need to ask the partners.

Firm tool only: this one is full of client names.

Spend the morning it hands back on the idea you'd pitch if you stopped worrying what the committee would say.