Motion to Continue (Thinking About AI): Denied

Every week an attorney corners me and says, “I really need to get into this AI thing.”

Then they file the oldest motion in the book. Motion to continue. “After this trial.” “After the holidays.” “After I figure out what a prompt is.”

Counselor, I’ve seen your calendar. There is no after.

I don’t own a robe, but I’m ruling anyway. Motion denied.

I’ll keep this brief. (Not your kind of brief. The short kind.)

Every office has one. It has more previous owners than a used Corolla. It’s been through Save As so many times it should have its own bar number. And somewhere on page six, a client from the flip-phone era is still hiding, waiting to ruin your afternoon.

That’s not a system. That’s a hostage situation with letterhead.

Here’s the secret nobody says out loud: most attorneys aren’t afraid of AI. They’re afraid of looking like they don’t know how to use it. Fair enough. Most of them don’t. Yet.

So let’s fix that. Two steps. Neither one is billable. Sorry.

Before anyone in your office touches an AI tool, you need a written AI policy. Yes, you. Even if your entire firm is you, a laptop and a coffee maker older than your bar card.

And make it a real one. Not a template you downloaded, renamed and buried in a folder you will never open again. A policy nobody reads is a paperweight with a header.

A real policy says which tools are allowed, what client information can go into them (and what never, ever does), and who checks the work before it leaves the building. SB 574 takes effect January 1, 2027, and its duties land on every attorney who uses generative AI, written policy or not. And no, your dog did not eat your policy.

Policies aren’t my department. I build drafting software. But I’d tell you the same thing over a beer: rules first, toys second.

Not your whole practice in one weekend. That’s how people swear off AI by Monday, right next to the treadmill and the juice cleanse.

One task. Pick a motion you’ve written so many times you could draft it in your sleep. (Some of you already have. We can tell.) You know the law, you know the structure, and you’ll spot a wrong turn faster than opposing counsel spots a typo.

Run it through a tool built for legal drafting. Not the chatbot that helped with your fantasy football draft. Wrong kind of draft.

Then check everything. Every citation, every quote, every fact. Treat it like a first-year associate’s work: fast, eager, wildly confident, and occasionally making things up.

Then time it. Less time and a better motion? Verdict in your favor. Your client wins, your Saturday wins, and your family might even recognize you.

This is the job we built Draft Motion for. Pick from 138 preset motions or name your own. Give it the case and the facts. Answer its clarifying questions. Review it and export it to Word. State or federal. Built for the defense table.

And it doesn’t hand you a draft and wish you luck. It hands you a verification path.

Checking a cite becomes a click instead of a scavenger hunt. You still have to click. I can lead a lawyer to LegInfo, but I can’t make them read.

And it won’t sign for you. You review it, you verify it, you sign it. Starting January 1, 2027, checking AI’s work is the law. (Between us, it was always a good idea. Now it’s a mandatory one.) Even if AI never touched it, the new law says every citation in a filed paper has to be personally verified. That part sits in the Code of Civil Procedure, and whether it reaches criminal filings is still an open question. Check them anyway. Judges have long memories.

Find your AI policy. Read it. If it doesn’t exist, or it’s the downloaded one nobody has opened, fix that first.

Then pick one motion you’ve drafted more times than you’d like to admit. Run it through, time it, check it, and decide for yourself. Head to draftmaster.ai and run one motion.