I am a lawyer who uses ChatGPT to assist in drafting documents. My clients are familiar with it too, but at the end of the day, clients are lazy, and would rely on the lawyer to draft something as simple as a cover letter or HR form. For those clients who pre-generate contracts and legal documents through ChatGPT, the result is astoundingly bad, such that I still had to overhaul their outputs.

Laziness and human incompetence -- these are the reasons why I exist.

Professional service organizations with cross-border capabilities can qualify for this.

As a lawyer who has founded a law firm, it's possible to qualify for all criteria, even item 12, which can be addressed by the founder knowing how to decouple the founder's personal labor inputs (e.g., time) from the firm's revenue and profit performance.

I'm not sure if this is true, at least for corporate law firms.

1. Selling the world: Kind of depends what is meant by selling the world. It is very difficult for a single law firm to provide local legal advice in many jurisdictions. A small number of law firms have global reach, but many of those operate franchise models and none of them, to my knowledge, are truly global (operating in every jurisdiction or even the large majority of jurisdictions). On the other hand, if we are talking about, for example, an English law firm providing English legal advice to clients throughout the world, then yes, that is possible.

3. Minimal labour requirements: I don't think this applies to corporate law firms. Transactional and litigation work is labour-intensive. Advisory work too, to a lesser extent. You can see that play out the last few years where the large corporate firms in New York and London are paying huge salaries to get bodies in the door, while associates were getting burned out from the insane hours demanded of them.

4. Low overhead: This specifically includes "high-priced employees" as an example and I think that would include lawyers.

7. Cash billings: In theory this should apply to law firms. In practice, in my experience, it is more complicated, with lawyers often getting paid only at the end of big deals or cases or offering contingent fees, etc.

8. Free of regulation: Definitely not true for law firms.

9. Portable or easily moveable: Also not true.

I would think professional services organisations fall somewhat flat on points 3 and 4? The product of a law firm does not seem immune to being copied and it does not have minimal labor requirements. Taking on twice as many cases needs almost twice as many people, no?

EDIT: not that it can't be a great business, it just "only" scores 10 out of 12 haha.

I live in a country (outside the US) with good healthcare system and accessible and relatively affordable healthcare services. Health insurance is good to have, but not having it will not make a person like me teetering on the edge of poverty.

I use Telegram's Saved Messages feature, put there anything I need to remember or anything noteworthy, and that's it. That's journaling for me. It helps me remember things. Is that journaling? Is there a need for me to do journaling other than what I am already currently doing?

It doesn't matter. I know my cost of living / monthly expense. My monthly expense has been budgeted to help me live a comfortable life (not just a surviving existence), with occasional luxuries.

It is great that you're in that position. You must be a very risk averse person as you're still asking this question even if you're already in a very enviable position. Quit your job now and focus on what you want to do (assuming if the job is not what you want to do if money is not a problem)

That's a good point. I am very, very, very risk averse, as I am both a lawyer and finance guy (risk management).

there is not enough context. Money is only one part of the puzzle. The other important parts are what you're gonna do after you quit your job? how eager you want to do it? Do you enjoy or hate your current job? Are you learning and growing at your current job.

I like the writings of Arthur Clarke, but I must confess, this story never made sense to me. How could simply compiling a list of names bring about the end of the world? Didn't the names already exist as ideas even before they were printed on paper? Why would printing all of them on paper make any difference?

On a side note: how fast could a quantum computer generate the list using qubits?

my theory is that it's not the existence of the names or printing them that matters, but humanities awareness of them, that is a human mind reading and processing them. just like the apple always existed in paradise, but only biting into it caused adam and eve to be expelled.

It's interesting to note that not all services that receive government subsidies are public goods in the traditional economic sense. Services like healthcare, education, housing, agriculture, and energy are all essential for social welfare, but they can be excluded and used up by individuals, making them rival and excludable. However, governments often provide subsidies for these services to support marginalized groups or address market failures. So I don't get the nitpicking.

Just wanted to add that usage-based pricing is a form of dynamic pricing, where the price for a given level of service is not fixed or is variable based on various factors like demand, supply, time of day, etc. In this case, the dynamic pricing parameter is based on usage.

When it comes to consumer protection laws, dynamic pricing is often treated as a form of price discrimination, where different customers are charged different prices for the same product or service. The legal treatment of price discrimination may vary from country to country, and it would be intriguing to see how usage-based pricing will be received in other countries.

Good point. I could imagine someone with an impairment might take longer to navigate the service and would thus be charged more.