Most firms have tried AI. Few run on it.

Cody Reppert · Field notes

Almost every firm I talk to has already tried AI. Someone opened ChatGPT or Claude, got a few interesting results, and then quietly went back to the old way of working. The tools didn't fail. The fit did.

This is the pattern worth understanding, because it is the difference between a firm that spent money on AI and a firm that actually runs on it. And it has almost nothing to do with which model you use.

Why the first try fades

Out of the box, an AI assistant knows nothing about your firm. Not your clients, not your services, not your house style, not the way your team actually moves work from one person to the next. So a capable person asks it for help, gets a generic answer to a specific problem, and reasonably concludes it is more trouble than it is worth.

That experience is so common it has become the default. People treat AI the way they treated the internet in 1997: an occasional novelty, slightly awkward, never quite part of how the work gets done.

The gap is fit, not horsepower

Buying a newer, smarter model does not close this gap. Neither does bolting on another tool. The gap is configuration: the context of your business written down so it is read every time, the right systems connected so the work lives where it already lives, and workflows shaped around how your team actually operates rather than a generic demo.

When those pieces are in place, the same model that felt like a gimmick last year becomes something people reach for by default, because it finally knows enough to be useful without a fresh explanation in every conversation.

What "running on it" looks like

A firm that runs on AI is not the firm with the most tools. It is the firm where the repetitive, draining parts of the work, the document chasing, the status updates, the first drafts, the re-keying between systems, move faster because the setup carries them, and a person stays in control of anything that carries risk.

That state does not happen by accident, and it does not survive on its own. It is installed deliberately and then maintained as the tools change. That is the whole job: get the fit right, then keep it right.