It’s been almost a quarter of a century since I nursed my last baby. But I can still recall that specific brand of frustration that only parents who practice understand.
You’re awake. You’re alert. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You finally have a stretch of downtime but you can’t use your hands!!!
Maybe you’re nursing a baby mid-brief but your one-finger pecking on the computer keyboard can’t keep up with your thoughts. Or maybe you’re idling in a school pickup line for 40 minutes, stuck behind a minivan with nowhere to go. Or frantically chopping up vegetables and sauteing un-defrosted meat in an effort to get dinner on the table in 30 minutes.
Used to be your options were to scroll social media and maybe like a couple of posts.
But AI opens up a whole new world of productivity for parents.
Even if you can’t type, you can still think. You can still listen and absorb information. You can still speak. You can still delegate. And if you can do those things, you can produce meaningful work in an AI age.
Put Cases on Audio
Struggling to keep up to date on your cases or new court rulings? Tools like Google NotebookLM let you upload case documents — from complaints, motions, deposition transcripts, contracts, or case law and generate structured summaries that can be delivered as audio. Your case file becomes a private podcast.
For the busy parent, that means listening through earbuds instead of squinting at your phone to read filings. Suddenly, a 45-minute drive to school and wait in the pickup lane morphs into substantive case review. That’s no longer idle time. It’s strategic preparation — and it’s billable too!
Transform Concepts Into Content
I’ve written before about the value of voice as a lawyers’ productivity tool in an AI era. But for working parents, voice is a bona fide hands-free superpower. Just switch on an AI-powered recording device like Plaud.AI or an app like Granola.AI on your phone, and you can spew out anything from rough drafts of LinkedIn posts to stream-of-conscious notes for structuring a reply brief or a custody agreement. Once the baby is down or the kids are occupied, just plop the transcript into your AI platform and ask it to convert your rough concepts into polished copy.
Role-play
Maybe you have an argument coming up in court or an awkward negotiation about a salary increase. If you’ve got an AI app on your phone, you can give it some background, then ask it to role-play the judge or your boss and start the argument or conversation. You can even ask AI to rank your performance and give you feedback.
Let the Agent Handle the Desk Work
If you prefer to give your kids full focus, consider AI agents. AI agents can do the desk work while you’re away from the desk. For example, Anthropic’s Cowork, built into the Claude desktop app, lets you point Claude at a folder and describe what you need — organize case files with a consistent naming convention, compare three expert reports in a Word document, pull data from a spreadsheet into a summary memo or client update for your review. It breaks the task into steps, executes them, and delivers finished output. Through connectors, it can even reach into Google Drive and Gmail to pull context on its own. You step away, handle bedtime or the drive home from gymnastics, and come back to tidied-up files or a first draft. It’s the kind of work that has to get done but now, you don’t have to be the one executing it.
This Isn’t About Optimizing Parenthood
Even though I would have enthusiastically availed myself of AI tools back in the day, I don’t mean to suggest that every pickup line or nursing session should be milked for content (pun intended!). Some moments are simply for chilling or being present for the lullaby, the backseat conversation about your child’s day, or the sound of silence.
My point isn’t to encourage use of AI to turn parenthood into a productivity hack. Instead, AI is a way to reinforce what all of us working parents, particularly moms, already know: that meaningful work doesn’t always happen at a desk.
For too long, the legal profession has treated physical presence as a proxy for seriousness. But thinking is work. Strategy is work. Prep is work. And now, with agents that can execute on your instructions while you’re away, even the administrative grind doesn’t require you to be chained to a screen. With AI, while life happens, serious lawyering can happen too.
Carolyn Elefant is one of the country’s most recognized advocates for solo and small firm lawyers. She founded MyShingle.com in 2002, the longest-running blog for solo practitioners, where she has published thousands of articles, resources, and guides on starting, running, and growing independent law practices. She is the author of Solo by Choice, widely regarded as the definitive handbook for launching and sustaining a law practice, and has spoken at countless bar events and legal conferences on technology, innovation, and regulatory reform that impacts solos and smalls. Elefant also develops practical tools like the AI Teach-In to help small firms adopt AI and she consistently champions reforms to level the playing field for independent lawyers. Alongside this work, she runs the Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant, a national energy and regulatory practice that handles selective complex, high-stakes matters.
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