Thinking out loud
This blog is where I build, in public, the system I defend in private. If the reasoning doesn't hold up in writing, it probably doesn't hold up in the operation either.
Knowledge professionals are terrible archivists of our own judgment. We solve a problem, we learn something, and two months later we are solving the same problem from scratch because we never documented how we thought it through the first time.
This blog is an attempt to stop letting that happen to me.
The public notebook
Every Tuesday, Exoesqueleto Cerebral, my newsletter, goes out with the system behind a professional decision. That will keep arriving on Tuesdays, in your inbox. This is different.
Two things live here:
- News. The stories I cover in the newsletter don't stay on Substack: they get written up here, with reasoning, context and a verifiable source. The newsletter links to these pieces. If you want to reread the coverage of something six months later, you come to this site. For example: the consulting firm OpenAI just built.
- Essays. Long pieces that don't fit in a weekly edition. Judgment calls, distinctions, decisions that deserve more room than the newsletter format allows. For example: why billing by the hour stopped protecting the professional.
The difference between the two is simple: news has an expiration date; an essay doesn't.
Why publish the reasoning
For one selfish reason and one structural one.
The selfish one: thinking out loud forces me to decide better. If the judgment doesn't hold up when I write it down, it probably doesn't hold up in practice either. Publishing is the hardest filter I know.
The structural one: a knowledge practice runs on systems. Loose advice is not enough. A system, to be auditable, has to be written down. If what I do at SPREAD, at Candelario Abogados, at iUS Online or at Reviste depends on judgment that only lives in my head, it is not a system. It is a superstition.
That holds for me. And it holds for you if you run your own practice.
What this blog is not
It is not a news aggregator. If you want fast headlines, there are better sources than me.
It is not a repository of tips. "Five tricks for busy lawyers" will not appear here. If you need that, there are better sources for it too.
It is not a personal diary. You will not read what I had for breakfast or how my week went.
It is a public notebook on how I think about how a knowledge practice operates. And by extension, how the person running their own should think about it.
If that is useful to you, you are in the right place. If not, I understand: there are more comfortable things to read than this.
Every Tuesday I break down a real operating decision, with the full reasoning. Read it if you run your own practice. Subscribe to Exoesqueleto Cerebral.