In a World of Button Pushers, Be a First Chair
As I settle back into my office after Filevine’s Lex Summit, nursing a cold, I’m reflecting on what the event meant to me and how it will shape our future here at Fuicelli & Lee.
This was my fifth year attending Lex Summit and my first year speaking. On Tuesday morning, in one of the first breakout sessions of the conference, I joined Laura Schultes of RSH Legal and Mary Kathryn Davis of The Roth Firm on a panel called Filevine as a Living System: Building, Rebuilding, and Never Stopping. It was an honor to share what I’ve learned from more than eight years of building, breaking and rebuilding our system as we grow from a team of 10 to more than 30.
Our panel focused on the foundations of Filevine: the structure a firm needs before all the exciting new AI features can do their job. Clean, structured data is what makes AI output and reporting accurate. Get the foundation right, and everything you build on top of it, AI included, works for you instead of against you.
Systems Reflect Values
At Lex, I got to give people a peek behind the curtain at how we run cases at Fuicelli & Lee. We’re organized and thoughtful, and every case is set up right from day one so nothing important slips through the cracks. One of our core values is “Better Tomorrow Than Today.” Improvement is at our core. We expand on what works, we replace what doesn’t, and we constantly strive to do the best we possibly can for our clients.
At Fuicelli & Lee, our systems reflect our values. The way we treat our clients is the way we treat each other, inside the firm and out. We actively listen, we pinpoint exact needs and we solve problems. Every client should feel like our top priority, not a claim number. Our systems let our people spend their time on the human side of a case while the technology carries the weight of the data.
AI Everywhere
My belief has always been that systems should work harder than the people using them, so keeping my finger on the pulse of technology is a critical part of my role.
Almost every session at Lex this year was about AI. It makes sense — these tools are powerful, and they’re getting better every month. But somewhere between sessions, one thought kept nagging at me. If everyone has access to the same technology, including our competitors and the insurance companies on the other side, then the technology isn’t the advantage anymore.
So what is? Let’s talk about the difference between button pushers and first chairs.
Button Pushers
A button pusher lets the tool lead. They type in a prompt, accept what comes back and move on. It looks efficient. It might even look impressive.
But anyone can push the same buttons and use the same pre-built AI tools. And when everyone pushes the same buttons, everyone gets the same results. That’s not good enough for an injured person who is trusting us with their case, their livelihood and their future.
The First Chair
At trial, the first chair is the lead attorney, the person responsible for every decision in the case. A first chair runs the case. So when I say that we should all strive to be first chair in our own work, this is what I mean:
Use AI the way a great trial lawyer leads a strong legal team: to draft, summarize, organize and catch what might have been missed. Then bring what no tool can: judgment, gut instinct, the ability to read a room, empathy for others, and personal relationships built over time.
A first chair asks better questions. In a world where everyone has the same tools, the richness of your questions and the thought behind them is what sets you apart.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. A button pusher asks AI to summarize a stack of medical records. A first chair asks what’s missing from those records, what the insurance company will focus on, and what the client hasn’t told us yet that matters.
Being first chair also means being responsible with the tools themselves. We follow an internal AI use policy and only use trusted AI tools that protect our clients’ information. A first chair attorney controls what information is shared and what stays protected, and our use of AI is no different.
And being first chair means we don’t get to coast. We keep learning, keep deepening our understanding of the law, and stay truly competent, not just look competent because a tool produced something polished. It means investing in our human relationships as seriously as we invest in our technology.
Our Clients Deserve a First Chair
Our clients come to us during some of the hardest seasons of their lives. They don’t deserve a button pusher who gets the same result as everyone else. They deserve advocates who put real thought and care into their case, because they’re human, and so are we.
Technology should support that work. It shouldn’t replace it. If our clients wanted to be represented by an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude, they wouldn’t have called us. It’s our duty to use our entire arsenal of tools to advocate for them — not pass the baton to AI to do the work for us.
I came home from Lex with new ideas, a renewed sense of purpose and, apparently, a cold. I also came home more convinced than ever that the best technology frees people up to do the work only people can do. That’s what our clients can count on us to keep building at Fuicelli & Lee.
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by Jesse McGee, Operations Manager