A sanity check before you call the attorney

A church invited us to bring a bus to a community event so kids and families could climb aboard and learn how transit works. It sounded like a good day out. It also sounded like the kind of thing a public agency should think about for a minute before saying yes.

What I asked

I pasted in the invitation and asked whether taking part would create a legal or ethical problem for a public transit agency.

What came back

A clear framework instead of a yes or no:

• The activity itself is secular. We would be showing people a bus.
• The event was open to the general public.
• No public money would go to the institution.
• The real risk is not showing up at a church. The risk is inconsistency: saying yes to one group and no to a similar one.

So the test is whether we would do the same thing for any community group, religious or not, that asked the same way.

It then recommended something I would not have thought of on my own. Send a short note to the city attorney's office before committing. Partly to confirm there is no local policy I had missed, and partly so there is a record that I checked.

Why this matters

I used to be a paralegal, so I know how much an attorney's time is worth. The AI did not replace the attorney. It let me walk in with a specific question and the facts already organized, so the conversation is short.

Where it falls short

It does not know your city's policies unless you give them to it, and it is not your lawyer. Use it to get your question in order. Let counsel make the call.

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Part of the series 27 ways I actually use AI. Claude drafted this post from the record of our work together.