A private practice · Michael Borck
AI can do the work. Your firm is paid for the judgment. Most AI rollouts fail at the team level. This practice helps law firms, medical practices, accounting firms, and financial advisory practices adopt AI as a collaborator, with governance and data sovereignty by design.
Michael Borck · Lecturer at Curtin University, teaching AI and cyber security · author of Conversation, Not Delegation and The Human Edge · creator of the framework, adopted onto the reading list at Kaplan Business School · runs a personal local-AI research lab on his own hardware.
Book a DiagnosticWorkshops and programs grounded in the Conversation-not-Delegation framework. The substantive change comes before any policy is written.
AI use-policy development and a governance audit specific to how a regulated firm actually operates.
Advisory and time-boxed local-AI deployment for firms whose clients or regulators expect that sensitive material does not leave the building.
The practice does not undertake enterprise tenders, hourly billing, staff augmentation, or open-ended implementation work. Engagements are fixed-scope and fixed-price.
The same argument runs through the practice and both books, The Human Edge and Conversation, Not Delegation.
Passive delegation accepts the output without framing the problem, checking the claim, or making the decision. Active use puts the effort where it builds capability. The tool is the same in both cases; the use is what differs.
Five patterns of active use matter:
| Pattern | What it looks like | What it strengthens |
|---|---|---|
| Build | Do a rough pass first, then compare it with AI. | Retrieval, generation and calibration |
| Explore | Generate alternatives, challenge assumptions and surface what you missed. | Flexibility and breadth |
| Collaborate | Use AI to widen who can take part, and keep the person on the other side. | Perspective-taking and coordination |
| Converse | Prepare better questions and keep the human conversation. | Listening and relational judgement |
| Judge | Keep the decision, accountability and final check with a person. | Consequence reasoning and ownership |
The mechanism is the right amount of challenge, with feedback and a way to test whether the capability transfers. Struggle for its own sake is not the goal. If AI removes every difficult step, the reps that build memory, judgement and skill disappear. If it takes over the low-value production and leaves time for framing, checking, deciding and connecting, it can protect the capacities people worry about. The patterns overlap, and a workflow that removes all five may be faster and still leave the firm less capable. The saved time has to go somewhere useful, and The Human Edge makes the same point: the hour you save gets reinvested before you notice.
The method is public. The client work is private. Inspect the evidence, the local-AI lab, or the field notes.