AI for law firms: intake, documents and research

Start with the work around the advice

Much of a fee earner’s week goes on tasks that surround the legal work: taking down the details of a new enquiry, reading a long document to find the clauses that matter, producing standard letters and answering clients who ask where things stand. These tasks have clear inputs, and a solicitor can check the output quickly. That makes them the safest place to start.

The advice itself stays with your lawyers. AI prepares, sorts and drafts. A solicitor reviews, decides and signs.

Client intake and triage

Intake is often the best first pilot. Enquiries arrive in a similar form, the triage rules can be written down, and the result goes to a person before anything happens.

• Enquiries by phone, web form or email are captured in the same structure: practice area, the other parties, key dates and what the client wants to achieve.
• The names of the other parties are collected for the conflict check. The enquiry stays a prospect until the firm clears the check, and the assistant never confirms that the firm will act.
• Urgent matters, such as a hearing next week or a deadline that is about to pass, are flagged to the duty solicitor straight away.
• Enquiries outside the firm’s practice areas get a polite reply the firm has approved, with a referral if you have one.
• Every caller is told that the assistant takes details and books appointments, and that advice comes from a solicitor.
• Existing clients who want their own solicitor are put through or given a call-back time, and the message is logged on the matter.
• The details become a new contact or matter in Clio or your case management system, ready for the fee earner to review.

Document work with references

Every output links back to the page or clause it came from, so a solicitor can check each point against the source.

• Summaries of long documents, such as leases, contracts, witness statements or correspondence files, with page and clause references.
• Comparisons of a draft against your standard terms or the previous version, with every change listed.
• Key terms pulled into a table: parties, dates, notice periods, break clauses, payment terms and limits on liability.
• First drafts of routine letters and client care letters, built from your approved templates and the intake record.
• Indexes and chronologies for bundles, built from the documents on file.
• Lists of missing documents or information, drafted for a fee earner to send to the client.

Research support, used carefully

General AI chat tools can produce case names and citations that do not exist, and lawyers have been criticised in court for relying on them. Research support should therefore work only on sources the firm can check.

In practice this means an assistant that searches your precedents, know-how notes and past advice, with access limited by team and matter, and the legal databases you already subscribe to where their terms allow it. It returns the passages it found, with links. A solicitor reads the sources and decides whether they apply. The assistant does not write the final opinion.

Each search and the passages returned are logged against the matter, so a supervisor can see what was checked. The same assistant can also answer staff questions about the firm’s own procedures, such as how to open a matter or which template to use.

What stays with solicitors

These limits are written into the setup and tested before launch. In the test week we try to make the assistant cross each one, and every attempt must end with a person.

• All legal advice, and any statement to a client about their prospects, rights or options.
• The decision to take on a matter, conflict decisions and the review of identity documents.
• Anything sent to a client, another party or a court. A fee earner approves it first.
• Client money. Any request to change bank details is treated as a fraud risk and goes to a person.
• Clients who may be vulnerable, distressed or at risk. The assistant hands these conversations to a person straight away.

Confidentiality and UK GDPR

Client information is confidential, and most of it is personal data under UK GDPR. Both apply to everything the AI reads and writes, and solicitors remain responsible for the advice that leaves the firm.

Documents stay in your case management system and your own accounts. The AI runs on enterprise APIs that do not train on client data. Access is limited by role and matter, every action is logged, and we sign a data processing agreement before any client data is processed. We give the person who leads on risk and compliance in your firm the documentation to review the design before launch.

Staff who use general AI tools need the same care: business accounts, and a short written policy on what may be pasted into them. Our team training covers both.

Prices and timelines

Where to start

Pick the problem that costs your fee earners the most time today. For client updates, for example, the assistant reads the latest entries on the matter and drafts a short note in plain English, which the fee earner checks, edits and sends. A pilot on one workflow costs £2,900 (£2,030 with the launch offer) and takes 2–4 weeks, including tests on past enquiries or documents. Connecting intake, document work and client updates with AI agents starts at £6,500 (£4,550). Ongoing care is £350 a month (£245), and AI usage is billed by the providers at cost on your own accounts. Prices exclude VAT.