Role Playing → War Gaming
Use AI as your competitive intelligence analyst
Note: This was originally posted on LinkedIn.
“I’d like a blue plate special” was a common saying when I was a younger lawyer in NYC. But it wasn’t a Seamless food order. I was asking our word processing office to compile a heavy binder of research on a target company – with analyst reports, SEC filings, earnings call transcripts, the works.
Today, AI arms lawyers with the advanced business and competitive intelligence that elevates AI-native lawyers from tactician to a higher level of business strategy.
Last week I wrote about role-playing negotiations with AI. Uplevel that by training AI with competitive intelligence so it flexes against real business and financial constraints.
Not just role-playing, but war-gaming.
- Example 1: Don’t just ask AI to review the IP indemnity in a vacuum. If AI knows the counterparty increased their litigation reserve by 40% last quarter and a Gartner report flagged IP risk in their industry, you push for broader indemnity coverage.
- Example 2: Their 10-K shows 60% revenue from just two customers, and the CEO of one customer just gave conference remarks (uploaded to YouTube) about building in-house alternatives. You push for more termination rights in your favor and exert leverage before competitors realize the same thing.
Consider non-traditional sources that give richer color. Markets now move digitally, and there’s value in sources that won’t show up in a proper white-shoe firm report.
Consider industry blogs, Substacks, podcasts, YouTube, comment letters, regulatory filings, job postings, mentions in other companies’ earnings. For consumer sentiment, Twitter/X, Threads, Reddit give you the pulse before it shows up in surveys.
The best way to start is to keep it simple.
Create a new notebook in Google’s NotebookLM. It’s trained as a sandbox and bases its answers on your sources without cluttering up context (no-code RAG, in the lingo). It also builds in deep research mode to quickly pull in new sources.
Then prompt it: “You’re an expert intelligence analyst of this company. Always answer my question by analyzing, based on the sources, how it fits into or conflicts with this company’s business, financial or technological priorities.”
Some more examples:
- Example 3: Some state AGs are investigating the counterparty’s consumer subscription practices, which are re-tweeted by prominent public officials. You push for changes in their product offering and business practices along with regular compliance reporting.
- Example 4: An activist is pushing the counterparty to cut costs and offload assets. Management promised “operational discipline” on their earnings call. You lock in better pricing for a longer term before this discipline soon harms your client.
How have you used AI to negotiate better or build competitive intelligence?