I before E except after C
or when sounded as A, as in neighbor or weigh.
Albeit, there's weird words like leisure and neither
(foreign and counterfeit don't make sense either).
Seismic and seisure and protein and height...
the rule is quite useless but possibly might
just yet be worth saving with some alteration:
(oops: heir, their, and sovereign... decaffeination)
so yes it's quite simple, as I'm sure you can see:
I before E when it wants to be!

[The first 2 lines are from my grade school English textbook. I made up the rest.]

-- Daniel Reeves