Exploring GenAI with VAILL: Day 5 ☑️

A 10-day journey into human-centered GenAI for legal professionals

☑️ Day 5: GenAI for Productivity

Welcome back! You’ve explored the basics of GenAI interaction, content creation, and analysis, and now let's focus on making your daily work more efficient. Today, we'll explore how a GenAI tool can help streamline your workflow and enhance your productivity while maintaining high professional standards.

Today's Focus: Learn to leverage GenAI tools for workflow optimization, task automation, and time management in your personal workflow.

🎯 Learning Objectives

• Explore techniques for GenAI-assisted task automation

• Develop strategies for efficient email and communication management

• Learn methods for streamlining routine workflows

🔑 Key Concepts

Productivity with GenAI isn't about replacing human judgment—it's about freeing up your time for the complex work that requires your expertise. Think of GenAI as your administrative co-worker—one that can help manage routine tasks, suggest process improvements, and handle repetitive work—while you focus on high-value analysis and relationships.

At VAILL, we've identified three key areas where GenAI can enhance productivity:

1. Task Management: Helping organize and prioritize work efficiently

2. Communication Streamlining: Drafting and managing routine correspondence

3. Process Optimization: Identifying and automating repetitive workflows

Remember: GenAI excels at handling routine tasks quickly, but you are essential for ensuring quality, maintaining professional standards, and making strategic decisions.

💡 Pro Tips

• Start with small, low-risk tasks to build confidence

• Create templates for recurring communications, with GenAI’s help

• Use GenAI to draft initial responses, then personalize

• Build a library of productive prompts

• Regularly review and refine automated processes

✍️ Today's Exercise

Choose one (or more!) of these productivity-enhancing exercises to try today:

Option 1: Follow-up Request Template

1. Open ChatGPT (or Claude, Gemini, etc.) and try this prompt: "Help me draft a professional email template for following up on an outstanding request. The template should:

   • Open with a friendly reminder

   • Clearly restate what was requested

   • Provide any helpful context or resources

   • Suggest concrete next steps

   • Include a reasonable timeline

   • Keep the tone helpful rather than demanding"

2. Try the template with three different scenarios:

   • Following up on information needed from a colleague

   • Following up on feedback/approval needed

   • Following up on a delayed response/deliverable

3. Save your favorite versions so you can easily access them for future use.

4. Ask your AI co-worker: "What AI tools or features could help track and manage outstanding requests more effectively? Please suggest specific tools and explain how they could help streamline follow-up communications while maintaining good professional relationships."

Option 2: Workflow Analysis

1. Choose one repeating task that involves feedback or reviews (like draft reviews, project approvals, or content edits).

2. Open the GenAI tool and try this prompt: "Help me create an effective feedback and review workflow. Please:

   • Design a clear process for gathering input

   • Suggest how to manage multiple reviewers

   • Recommend ways to handle conflicting feedback

   • Focus on making the review process smooth and efficient for everyone involved."

3. Alternatively, describe your current feedback and review workflow, and ask your AI co-worker to suggest improvements.

4. Review the suggestions and identify one improvement you can implement in your next review cycle.

5. Ask your AI co-worker: "What AI tools could help streamline the feedback and review process? Please suggest specific tools and explain how they could make collecting and managing feedback more efficient."

Option 3: Process Optimization

1. Think about how you regularly share important updates or information (like project status, team news, or important changes) with your team or stakeholders.

2. Open your AI tool and try this prompt: "Help me optimize my information-sharing process. Consider:

   • When and how updates should be shared

   • What information is most critical to include

   • How to make updates easy to digest

   • Ways to ensure important details aren't missed"

3. From the suggestions, select one process improvement to test this week.

4. Ask your AI co-worker: "What AI tools would be most helpful for streamlining information sharing? Please suggest specific tools and explain how they could make updates more effective and efficient."

Remember, you can always return to today's exercises as you discover new processes that need streamlining. The goal is to gradually build a toolkit of efficient workflows that save you time for more valuable work.

🔥 Power prompting tip: for any prompt, end by asking your AI co-worker if it needs any additional information, in order to respond. Your co-worker can be really good at telling you what’s missing from your prompt that can help improve its output.

⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Starting with a complex process instead of experimenting first with more simple, low-stakes processes

• Automating a process before optimizing the process (GenAI can help you optimize, too!)

• Overlooking the need for regular quality checks and refinements (i.e. continuous improvement)

⚡️ Lightning Round (Optional)

Track your tasks over the course of a workday¹, identifying:

1. Repetitive tasks that could be GenAI-assisted

2. Communication patterns that could be templated

3. Processes that could be streamlined

Create GenAI prompts for the three most promising opportunities and test them out.

🔄 Quick Recap

• GenAI can enhance productivity while maintaining quality

• Start small and scale gradually

• Focus on high-impact, repetitive tasks

• Regular review and refinement are essential

📔 Reflect

Before moving on, spend a few minutes in your learning journal noting:

• Any challenges you encountered today and how you addressed them

• Identify one repetitive task in your practice that consistently takes more time than you'd like, that you didn’t address in today’s exercises. How might today's GenAI productivity techniques help?

• One specific way you'll apply today's learning tomorrow

Your reflections create valuable reference points for developing sustainable AI practices.

📚 Additional Resources

• Article: Boost Your Productivity with Generative AI (Harvard Business Review) - Practical insights on integrating AI into workflows

• Video Podcast: Inside MinterEllison: A Case Study in Copilot Adoption (Geek in Review) - learn how one firm approached using a GenAI tool to achieve operational efficiencies (includes audio, video, and transcript)

• Interactive: Copilot (Microsoft) - If you use the Microsoft suite, consider exploring the Copilot AI assistant feature and how it can augment your workflow in Microsoft tools

👉 Coming Tomorrow

Get ready to focus on personal growth! Next, we'll explore how GenAI can support your continuous learning and professional development.

Keep experimenting with productivity enhancements, and share your discoveries with us at vaill@vanderbilt.edu!

1. Consider starting your task-tracking by first asking your AI co-worker how best to track your tasks, for this purpose. And remember the power question: ask what else the AI needs to know, in order to respond!