Zielinski Law LLCCounsel Operator
Newsletter · Free · Tuesdays and Fridays at 7:00 a.m. Central
Claude workflows for lawyers, checked against the Rules of Professional Conduct
What it is
Most writing about AI and law is either a sales pitch or a warning. Counsel Operator is neither. It is a working lawyer’s notebook on getting real work out of Claude: one task per issue, the workflow built step by step, and the ethics worked out before the prompt is typed.
Every workflow is checked against the duty of competence (Rule 1.1), the duty of confidentiality (Rule 1.6), the supervision rules (5.1 and 5.3), and ABA Formal Opinion 512 on generative AI. Where state guidance differs, the issue says so. The one rule underneath all of it: the lawyer verifies, every time.
It is written for solo and small-firm lawyers, in-house counsel, and legal-ops teams who would rather have a tested procedure than another list of tips. New issues arrive Tuesdays and Fridays. It is free.
Inside the issues
- A client-safe Claude setup, done in twenty minutes
- Discovery chronologies you can actually rely on
- Deposition outlines built from the documents
- Engagement-letter and protective-order clauses for AI
- The Illinois Supreme Court’s AI policy, decoded
- Twenty-five prompts for day one
Issues to date
- No. 009Verify.What Counsel Operator is, who it is for, and the one rule underneath every workflow. · Oct. 17, 2026
- No. 008Deposition.Turning the chronology into an outline that locks a witness into the documents. · Oct. 16, 2026
- No. 007Is Claude Confidential?What Rule 1.6 requires before you upload a client file, and what each Claude plan does with what you type. · Oct. 14, 2026
- No. 006The AI Disclosure Clause.Engagement-letter language for lawyers who use Claude, built on ABA Formal Opinion 512. · Oct. 14, 2026
- No. 005Illinois and AI.What the Illinois Supreme Court’s AI policy says, what it leaves out, and what it means for your next filing. · Oct. 14, 2026
- No. 004The AI Clause.Protective-order language for the age of AI, drawn from the first federal orders to address it. · Oct. 14, 2026
- No. 00325 Prompts.The Claude prompts to hand every lawyer on day one. Copy, paste, verify. · Oct. 14, 2026
- No. 002Chronology.Turning a 300-page production into a timeline you can trust. · Oct. 13, 2026
- No. 001Operator.A newsletter for lawyers who use Claude, and the first workflow: a client-safe setup in 20 minutes. · Oct. 9, 2026
Watch
Fifty seconds on what Counsel Operator is and how each issue is built.
Counsel Operator is published by Kevin M. Zielinski in his personal capacity. It is general information for lawyers, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship with Zielinski Law LLC. Nothing in it speaks for Southern Illinois University or the Institute for Reforming Government.