Hello to all ~10,000 of you from around the globe. Thank you for reading and sharing!

This is a different kind of Brainyacts. No news roundup. No analysis. Just a story and an ask.

For the past several days, I have been building something. Not writing about it. Not researching it. Actually building it. With my hands. Well, with my hands and Claude as my coding partner.

I want to tell you what it is and ask for your help.

Here is what happened.

I have spent years talking to law firm partners about their practices. And I kept seeing the same thing: partners who are genuinely exceptional at what they do, who have no real clarity on what makes them exceptional, why clients actually choose them, where they are leaving money on the table, or what their next strategic move should be.

Not because they are not smart. Because nobody has ever helped them see it. Their firms give them origination credit and maybe a business development person. But nobody sits down with the actual data of how a partner operates and says: here is what you cannot see about yourself, here is what it is worth, and here is what to do about it.

So I decided to build the thing I kept wishing existed.

What I built.

It is called the Advantage Interview. It is a web application. A strategic assessment for law firm partners that generates a personalized Advantage Profile.

Here is what is underneath it. For the last 20 years, I have been doing this work in person as a strategy advisor to law firm partners. Sitting across the table, asking hard questions, finding the patterns they cannot see about their own practices, and helping them do something about it. I also teach this, breaking down case studies and real situations in the classroom. Over that time, I have built on and contributed to a body of research, both my own and others, on how elite professionals create, capture, and sometimes leave behind extraordinary value.

The Advantage Interview is my attempt to codify some of that: the advisory instincts, the research frameworks, the practitioner patterns I have observed over hundreds of engagements, and put it into a tool that can deliver that kind of insight to any partner, at scale, without needing me in the room.

You answer 69 questions across 8 domains: how your practice makes money, how it is structured, what differentiates you, how your clients actually see you, how you collaborate internally, where your strategy is (or is not), how you behave with clients, and what your natural strengths are.

Then an engine analyzes your answers against those research frameworks and practitioner patterns and generates a detailed profile. Not a personality test. Not a generic report. A specific, sometimes uncomfortably honest, strategic mirror that names things about your practice you may not have seen, calculates value you may not have priced, and identifies moves you may not have considered.

Now this is not a complete and thorough diagnosis; but it is a starter kit. Enough to help a partner focus, get curious about their practice, and take some action.

How I built it.

I am not a developer. I am just like you. I had all of this knowledge and experience and research, and I knew partners needed what it could produce. What I did not have was the ability to turn it into software.

So I learned. I used Claude as my coding partner, writing every line of code together in the terminal. I deployed it as a real web application that lives on real infrastructure. It works. People can use it right now.

The AI is how it got built. It is not what it is built on. What it is built on is two decades of pattern recognition, research, and the kind of honest strategic conversation that most partners never get from their firms.

I tell you this not to impress you but because I think it matters. The gap between having domain expertise and shipping a product has collapsed. If you have a clear problem to solve and deep knowledge of the people you are solving it for, you can build real software now. That is not a hypothetical. I just did it.

What I need from you.

I need 10 partners to be my first beta testers.

Here is what that involves:

That is it. You get a free strategic profile that I believe will show you something about your practice you have not seen before. I get the feedback I need to make it better.

Who I am looking for.

To be useful as a beta tester, you need to be:

Practice area does not matter. Geography does not matter. I want a diverse group.

How to get in.

Reply to this email. Just say "I'm in" and tell me your practice area, your firm size, and the best time to connect. I will take the first 10 qualified partners who respond.

If you are not a partner or not at a firm that size, you can still help. Forward this to a partner you think would find it valuable. I will remember who sent them.

I will be back soon with the regular Brainyacts. But this week, I wanted to share something real. Something I built. And something I think matters.

Talk soon,
Josh

That is it for now. Talk soon again.

P.S. Claude made a nice graphic for this.

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is legal advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not legal advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any legal decisions. Please /be careful and do your own research.