Legal & Professional Services practice

Faster intake. Cleaner first drafts. More lawyer time on the law.

Firms spend fee-earner and staff attention on intake forms, first-pass review, document filing and billing cleanup. We find the workflows where that preparation can run on agents, keep lawyers on advice, privilege and final review, and measure the result per matter.

Built for: COO · Executive Director · Managing Partner · Chief Innovation or Knowledge Officer · Director of Legal Operations

Assess a Workflow Book an AI Operating Leverage Audit call

The operating reality

Clients push back on bills, alternative fee arrangements put the cost of every hour on the firm, and good associates and staff are hard to keep. Much of the non-billable effort sits outside the practice management system: intake emails, conflict searches, document filing and time entries rewritten at month end.

Most firms have already bought AI tools, and many lawyers use them on their own. The question is which workflows they should run inside the firm's systems, what they must never decide, and how you will know the effort per matter actually fell.

Workflows

Where the leverage hides

For each workflow: how it runs today, what agents and plain automation take over, and where people keep the judgment.

Matter intake and conflicts

Today: Intake staff copy details from emails and forms into the practice management system, run conflict searches by hand, and chase the partner for missing information.
Agents and automation: Agents extract parties, matter type and key facts, run the conflict search across your systems, assemble the hits with context and flag what is missing.
People keep: The conflicts team and the responsible partner decide on every potential conflict, waiver and engagement.

Measured by: Time from inquiry to matter opened · Intake records returned for missing data · Conflict reports prepared per analyst

First-pass contract and document review

Today: Associates read every agreement in a set to find key clauses, deviations from the playbook and missing terms before any real analysis begins.
Agents and automation: Agents extract clauses, compare them to your playbook and precedents, and produce an issues list with each point linked to its source.
People keep: Lawyers judge the risk, decide what to negotiate and own every word of advice to the client.

Measured by: Associate hours per document set · Issues found at first pass versus later · Turnaround on first review

Knowledge and precedent retrieval

Today: Lawyers search the document management system, ask colleagues by email and rebuild work the firm has already done because they cannot find it.
Agents and automation: An agent searches approved precedents, prior work product and know-how, respecting matter access rules, and returns sources with a short summary.
People keep: Lawyers decide what applies to the matter. Knowledge teams own what counts as an approved precedent.

Measured by: Time to find a usable precedent · Repeat requests to the knowledge team · Drafts started from approved precedent

Due diligence preparation

Today: Teams open every document in the data room, sort it against the request list and summarize it in a tracker before they review the substance.
Agents and automation: Agents index and classify the data room, map documents to the request list, extract key terms and flag gaps and red-flag clauses.
People keep: Lawyers review the red flags, decide on materiality and sign off on the diligence report.

Measured by: Hours to first draft of the diligence tracker · Documents mapped per hour · Missing documents found before the deadline

Billing narratives and time-entry cleanup

Today: Billing staff and partners rewrite vague time entries, fix codes and adjust narratives to client guidelines before every bill goes out.
Agents and automation: Agents check entries against client billing guidelines, suggest clearer narratives and flag block billing, wrong codes and likely write-downs.
People keep: Billing partners approve the bill, decide on write-offs and own the client relationship.

Measured by: Pre-bill review time · Entries rejected by clients · Days from month end to bill sent

Document classification and filing

Today: Emails and attachments sit in personal inboxes or get filed to the wrong matter, so the record is incomplete when someone needs it.
Agents and automation: Agents suggest the matter, document type and folder for each item, file the confident ones and queue the rest.
People keep: Lawyers and records staff confirm uncertain filings and anything that may be privileged.

Measured by: Unfiled items per matter · Filing corrections · Time spent filing per fee earner

Client communications and status updates

Today: Partners and associates write routine status updates and answer “where are we?” emails by checking the file and the docket.
Agents and automation: An agent drafts status updates from the matter record, deadlines and recent activity, ready for a lawyer to review.
People keep: A lawyer reviews and sends every client communication. Advice and bad news stay with the lawyer.

Measured by: Time to respond to status requests · Drafts sent with light edits · Status updates sent on schedule

What we measure

Every workflow gets a baseline before anything changes.

Non-billable hours per matter
Time from inquiry to matter opened
First-review turnaround
Bill rejection and write-down rate
Error rate on filed and extracted data

Risks and controls

Risks and the controls that address them
Risk	Control
An agent output reaches a client or court without a lawyer’s review.	Agents only draft. Nothing leaves the firm until a named lawyer approves it, and every approval is logged.
Confidential or privileged material crosses an ethical wall or matter boundary.	Agents inherit the DMS and matter access rules, so they can only read what the requesting user can read. Access is tested before go-live.
An extracted clause or citation is wrong and nobody notices.	Every finding links to its source text. Low-confidence results go to a person, and sample checks run on the rest.
Client data goes to a tool or model the client has not approved.	Models and data locations are set per client and outside counsel guidelines, with a record of what processed each matter.

How we would approach it

An example workflow design

This is illustrative. It shows how responsibilities split between systems, automation, agents and people. It is not a client result.

Matter intake and conflicts desk

Trigger: A new client or matter request arrives by email, form or referral.

Reference architecture

An illustrative design showing how we would approach the workflow. Not a client result.

1SystemThe intake form or inbox captures the request and attachments.
2AgentExtracts parties, related entities, matter type and key facts, and lists what is missing.
3AutomationRuns the conflict search across practice management, billing and CRM records.
4AgentSummarizes each hit with context and drafts the conflict report and the request for missing details.
5HumanThe conflicts team and responsible partner clear, waive or decline. Engagement decisions stay here.
6SystemThe matter opens in practice management and the outcome is logged for measurement.

Controls

Agents read only the records the conflicts team can access
Every potential conflict needs a named human decision
Low-confidence entity matches route to a person
Full log of request, search, report and decision

What we would measure

Time from inquiry to matter opened
Conflict reports per analyst per day
Requests returned for missing data
Staff hours per new matter

Related use cases

Assess a Legal & Professional Services workflow

Bring us one workflow that is slow, repetitive, error-prone or expensive. We'll help determine whether AI is actually the right lever.