The problem
The deliverable clients loved cost a full day of expert time, so it died.
Dudley’s renewable energy clients are developers, and the mineral ownership report Dudley delivers is built in the conventions of oil-and-gas title work: a spreadsheet listing who owns the mineral rights on each parcel, wrapped in legal disclaimers. It carries everything a title expert needs and nothing a developer can act on directly. Patrick Durman put it plainly: “You just see spreadsheet. It’s got disclaimers all over it. How do I interpret it?”
Dudley’s answer was a title summary, a plain-English writeup a client with no title background can follow. Writing one is translation work only a title professional can do: pulling together ownership reports, runsheets, deeds, and production records, then turning all of it into plain language a developer can act on. Patrick said a full report took him a day; Natalie Johns put a four-parcel project at a couple of hours. The cost won. Dudley stopped making the summaries, and the burden moved to the phone: a team member spending 30 minutes to an hour walking each client through the raw report, one call at a time.
The solution
Claude learned the translation from Dudley’s own best example.
Benali built Dudley a reusable skill in Claude AI, a saved capability the team can invoke on demand. It starts from one finished title summary and the exact source documents behind it. Claude studies both, works out where each piece of the summary came from, and builds that logic into the skill. From then on, Dudley uploads the raw documents for a new project and the skill drafts the summary, assembling ownership reports, runsheets, deeds, and production records into the plain-English writeup.
Claude flags anything it’s unsure about, so a title professional checks every draft before it goes out. Claude handles roughly 90%; the last 10% stays with the expert’s judgment, where it belongs.
Time & impact
A shelved deliverable came back, and it brings work in with it.
A multi-parcel summary that ran to a full day of expert time is now a 10-to-15-minute generate-and-review cycle. The summary Dudley had to shelve is back in the product line, at a cost the business can actually carry.
The real prize is the one the team named themselves: with a plain-English summary in hand, Dudley hands a client the results plus a bid for the next step, so approved work comes back in the door faster and repeat projects follow. As Blake Thomas put it, the title summary skill “is going to make us money” and “get more repeat work.” The experts spend their day on title work; the translation runs in minutes.