AI Solopreneur TrendDiscover the World's AI Solopreneurs

Oct 20, 2026

Running a Law Practice Solo with AI: A Contract Lawyer Who Built His Own AI Intake and a Personal Injury Attorney with No Paralegal

A California lawyer runs his practice alone and built an AI intake system that screens prospective clients for him. Another California attorney handles a personal injury docket with no paralegal by letting AI draft demand letters and search medical records. Here is what each one hands to AI, and what stays with the lawyer.

Founders in this article

For a lawyer, going solo has always meant being the attorney, the researcher, the drafter, the intake desk and the office manager at once. Growing usually meant hiring a paralegal or an associate, and then managing them.

Two California attorneys show how AI changes that. One handles contracts and business work, runs his practice alone and built his own AI intake system. The other is a personal injury attorney who carries a full docket with no paralegal, letting AI do the first pass on demand letters and medical records.

This article is for lawyers and legal professionals who are thinking about practicing on their own. We look at what each of them hands to AI, and then, in a separate section, at what their legal training still has to do. Because lawyers are bound by professional conduct rules, the line between AI work and attorney work matters more here than in most fields.

Sergei Tokmakov: a solo lawyer who built his own AI intake

Sergei Tokmakov is a California-licensed attorney who runs Terms.Law. He describes himself as a daily AI user since the early days of the GPT-3 API, and writes: "I run my own solo practice."

How he uses AI

  • Different tools for different jobs. He uses Claude for long-form drafting such as contracts and memos and ChatGPT for second-opinion drafting and research, and recommends legal research platforms such as Lexis+ AI or Westlaw Precision when citations to primary sources matter.
  • An AI intake system on his own site. He built and runs an intake flow that screens for conflicts, collects contact details and asks qualifying questions before routing a visitor to a fixed-fee package. By his own figures, it has handled 278 sessions averaging 4.3 exchanges and 1.9 minutes each, captured 197 leads, and told four visitors that they did not need to hire anyone.
  • Document automation. He builds custom workflows that pass a form through the Claude API to produce Word or PDF documents.
  • Rules first. He keeps client-confidential work on paid AI plans that do not train on inputs, redacts identifying client details, and reviews every AI output before it leaves the firm.

What it became

Alongside his legal work, he now sells his AI setup to other lawyers: a flat-fee AI use audit and policy package for solo firms, priced at $2,500 on his site. He is also candid about the limits, noting on the same page that only 14 percent of intake visitors leave an email address and that some failure modes only appeared under live traffic.

Lorraine Gingery: a personal injury attorney with no paralegal

Lorraine Gingery is a California plaintiff personal injury attorney and the founder of Lorraine Law, PC. After more than a decade at Gingery Law Group PC, she has run her own practice, Lorraine Law, since 2024, according to her Avvo profile. According to Anytime AI, the legal AI company she uses, she runs her practice solo with no paralegal or associate. Before using AI, she says: "A demand would take at least 4 hours."

How she uses AI

  • Demand letters drafted from the case file. The AI pulls the treatment timeline and damages facts from the file and produces a first draft. According to Anytime AI, her time per demand letter fell from more than four hours to under 30 minutes.
  • Searching medical records instead of reading them. For a case with 456 pages of medical records, she can ask the AI to find every reference to a specific body part or procedure.
  • She still owns the argument. She reviews and refines every draft and makes the strategic calls; the AI only prepares the groundwork.

What it became

According to Anytime AI, her caseload grew while her staffing cost stayed at zero: no paralegal to hire, train or manage, and no new payroll.

What legal experience gave them that AI could not

This section is our analysis, not a claim made by either attorney.

AI handles the first pass in both cases. What makes it safe to use comes from their training and their professional duties.

  • Knowing the rules that bind the work. Tokmakov's setup is built around confidentiality, supervision and citation-checking duties. A non-lawyer would not know which tool is acceptable for client work and which is not.
  • Knowing what a strong document looks like. Gingery can turn a 30-minute AI draft into a persuasive demand because she knows what an insurance carrier needs to see. The draft is a starting point, not the argument.
  • Knowing where the hours go. Both targeted the work they knew ate their time: intake and drafting for Tokmakov, demand letters and record review for Gingery.

The two cases also show two shapes of a solo law practice:

Sergei TokmakovLorraine Gingery
PracticeTerms.Law, contracts and business work, CaliforniaLorraine Law, PC, plaintiff personal injury, California
TeamSolo practiceSolo, no paralegal or associate
Main AI toolsClaude, ChatGPT, Claude API, legal research AIAnytime AI
What AI handlesDrafting, intake screening, document automationDemand letter drafts, medical record search
What stays humanReview of every output, citation checks, client adviceStrategy, final review, negotiation
Extra income from AISells an AI policy and audit package to other lawyersNone mentioned

What you can copy

These are our suggestions, drawn from the two stories. They are not legal advice.

  1. Learn your bar's rules on AI first. Confidentiality, competence and supervision rules apply to every AI tool you use. Read your state bar's guidance before putting client work into any tool.
  2. Use paid plans for client work. Choose AI plans that do not train on your inputs, and redact identifying details.
  3. Start with the slowest repeated task. For a litigator that may be record review; for a transactional lawyer, first drafts of standard documents.
  4. Check every citation yourself. AI can produce citations that look real and are not. Verify each one against the primary source.
  5. Let intake work for you. A structured intake flow can screen conflicts and qualify prospective clients before you spend time on a call.

Notes on the sources

The facts about Sergei Tokmakov, including his intake figures, come from his own website. The facts about Lorraine Gingery come from a blog post published on July 2, 2026 by Anytime AI, the legal AI company she uses, so it is written to promote the product. Neither source is independent, and descriptions such as running solo and the time saved are as stated in those sources. Prices are as of October 2026. Client reviews from 2017 on her Avvo profile mention staff at her previous firm; this article covers her current practice.

Sources

Related articles