Tank's delegation advice sounds appealing until you test it against legal realities. His core insight—that AI agents excel at breaking down tasks and prioritizing—fits well with product counsel work. But his "good enough" philosophy needs strict guardrails when consequences grow. The 80% solution is fine for customer support emails, but product counsel faces a different risk landscape. When reviewing feature launches, privacy disclosures, or compliance frameworks, "good enough" can mean the difference between shipping safely and creating liability.
The London Business School data showing only 30% of leaders delegate effectively suggests many struggle to tell high-stakes from low-stakes work. I've started using Tank's task breakdown approach—dividing legal reviews into specific, measurable parts rather than vague "review this feature" requests. The Eisenhower Matrix he mentions works, but legal needs a third dimension: irreversible consequences.
Some urgent-but-unimportant tasks become critical when mistakes add up across millions of users. The practical step is building delegation guidelines that explicitly highlight human-in-the-loop moments. Maybe not every contract clause needs attorney review, but every privacy-impacting feature does. AI can draft the initial assessment, but product counsel should set escalation triggers beforehand. The goal isn't perfect delegation—it's predictable delegation that fails safely when legal judgment is crucial.
Aytekin Tank
