The Pre-Brief

• I run four practices. My business model is that I refuse to specialise.· A lawyer who builds software, a producer who reads Friston, a writer with two bar memberships. The orthodoxy says pick one. The numbers say something else.
• $199 for the marketing, $5 for the science.· MyHeritage shows you 23 ancestral fragments. The raw file underneath has 700,000 markers. Here is how to read the rest of your own DNA in ten minutes for the price of a sandwich.
• The Estate Triage· When a parent dies or loses capacity. Before, ideally.

json
{
  "person": "Jane Wong",
  "company": "Acme Capital",
  "role": "Principal",
  "verified_facts": [
    "Joined Acme 2022 from Goldman MENA desk",
    "Wrote 2024 LP letter on SE Asia infra",
    "Cited Khaldun's prolegomenon in a 2023 panel"
  ],
  "open_questions": [
    "What changed her view on SEA infra since 2024?",
    "Why she left Goldman after only 18 months."
  ],
  "they_will_probe": [
    "Your delivery track record on >RM 2M projects",
    "Why your last raise was a SAFE not priced"
  ]
}

• OSINT source-triangulation
• investigative journalism methodology
• the diplomatic country-brief format
• LinkedIn API quirks
• Brave or Bing search API
• JSON-schema structured output
• adversarial cross-exam preparation (the questions they will ask you)

If a name is unfamiliar, that's the gap. The list is the curriculum.

1. 01

   Triangulate three independent sources for every claim. LinkedIn alone is insufficient.

2. 02

   Pull their last 90 days of public output. Letters, talks, panels, podcasts, op-eds.

3. 03

   Identify two open questions you genuinely want the answer to. Lead with one.

4. 04

   Run the adversarial pass. Ask Claude: "Given this dossier, what are the three sharpest questions they would ask me?"

5. 05

   Prepare your two-sentence answer for each adversarial question. Rehearse aloud once.

6. 06

   Render to a one-page PDF. Print it. Don't bring a laptop into the room.

Most people walk into meetings blind and play defence. The SaaS pre-meeting tools build one-way dossiers; they tell you who the other side is, not what they will ask you. Foreign-service country briefs always include both sides. The cross-examination preview is the half that gives you back the initiative. You stop reacting and start interviewing.

• The Discovery Protocol↗
  Interrogate Claude like a witness, not a search engine.