Most legal intake systems are a shared inbox and hope. Markus Hartmann, a corporate lawyer and longtime Marine reserve aviator and judge advocate, has a sturdier idea. Load the Marine Corps Planning Process manual, all 200-plus pages, into a secured enterprise AI and have it run every new request through six steps: problem framing, courses of action, war-gaming, comparison, orders and transition.
The useful part is step one. A deadline to review an agreement is the tasking; what the business actually needs may be something else. He also wants output that separates verified facts from assumptions and flags what’s missing. Privilege and access controls come first, and the lawyer still decides. Odd idea, but it beats the inbox. Anyone working with the business knows the request is rarely the actual question.
“Marines are trained to distinguish between the mission they have been assigned, the problem they actually confront, and the desired end state they are trying to achieve. These are not necessarily the same thing.”
Read: The Marine Corps Planning Process: A Surprisingly Effective Intake Tool for In-House Counsel in the Age of AI at LinkedIn – Markus Hartmann