For law firms · 5–50 attorneys
Every attorney, using AI to its fullest. Drafting, review, realization, and governance — built and running at the firm, not delivered in a deck.
Your associates, paralegals, and partners shouldn't be figuring AI out alone. We build the workflows — litigation drafting with verification, contract review with clause benchmarking, the realization plan that keeps the productivity gain with the firm, and the governance posture the ethics partner signs — and train your people to run them. Four to eight weeks. Fixed scope. Fixed duration.
For your next partners meeting
Adopt your firm's AI policy at the next partners meeting.
An ethics partner's pre-built case for an Opinion 512-aligned firm policy. Each Model Rule walked through one at a time, the malpractice-carrier renewal pack at the close, and engagement-letter consent clauses ready to drop into the firm's templates. Defensible to the carrier. Adoptable in twelve minutes.
The world you recognize
A capability gap that costs your firm more every month — in associate hours, in realization, and in the clients you keep.
Your associates spend 20 hours researching and drafting a motion that a 300-attorney firm produces in 5. The difference is not talent. It is tooling.
Your transactional team starts every deal from "the last deal" instead of a curated precedent library. Inconsistencies carry forward. Client-specific terms get missed. Associates burn hours on clause comparisons the firm has already done fifty times.
Realization fell from 84.5% to 81.9% over the past two years. At a firm your size, every lost percentage point is felt in partner compensation. Your best clients are asking why they pay hourly rates when other firms offer fixed fees backed by AI-assisted workflows. The firms that capture AI productivity as margin — not pass it through as a discount — retain those clients. The firms that do not lose them.
Meanwhile, your associates are already using ChatGPT and Claude on their own. Ad hoc. Without a firm workflow. Without the training that would let them use the tools well. The productivity gain stays scattered across individuals — the firm never sees it show up in realization, in partner time, or in faster turnaround for the client.
The equity partners are asking about AI in hallway conversations. The malpractice carrier is asking about AI governance at renewal. Both conversations go better when the firm has already done the work.
What your attorneys and paralegals can do after
What your associates, paralegals, and partners do differently the week after we leave.
Associates produce partner-quality first drafts.
Research that took days takes hours. A built-in verification layer catches hallucinated citations before any AI output reaches a partner's desk. Associates understand the tools, understand the ethical guardrails, and run the workflow independently. Zero fabricated citations reach a court.
Contract review catches what manual review misses.
Practice-specific clause libraries flag deviations from your firm's precedent and market standard. Associates run the review themselves. Review time is compressed while the billed rate is maintained. That is direct margin — not a discount.
The firm keeps the money AI saves.
AI cuts the hours. The question is who keeps the savings — the firm or the client. The engagement includes a pricing plan that charges for the value you deliver, not the hours you bill. Firms that solve this first hold onto their top clients. Firms that don't watch those clients move to firms offering fixed fees backed by AI-assisted work.
Paralegals own the docketing workflow.
AI-assisted calendaring catches what manual entry misses. Your staff understands the system and trusts it. Missed deadlines are the single largest malpractice trigger — 38% of suits against law firms trace to calendaring failures. Getting this right protects the firm's carrier renewal every year going forward.
The capability stays after we leave.
Partners, associates, and paralegals know which AI tools to use, when to use them, and how to get real work done with them. They also know where the boundaries are, so the practice operates without new friction. No dependency on an outside consultant six months later.
How an engagement works
Three phases. Each one within the managing partner's discretion.
01
Diagnostic
Four to eight weeks
Five deliverables: an AI-use assessment (including unsanctioned use), a workflow recommendation mapped to where AI will make your attorneys most productive, a partner-meeting memo in your firm's economic language, a practice policy your ethics partner can approve, and engagement-letter language for your jurisdictions.
02
Build and teach
Two to four months
One working system: litigation drafting with verification, contract review with clause benchmarking, transactional drafting from your precedent library, or docketing compliance. Partners, associates, and paralegals trained on the workflow — and on the boundaries that keep it defensible.
03
Expand
As needed
Additional workflows at lower cost. Your people are trained. The governance framework exists. Each additional system is faster to build because the foundation is there.
The architecture under the workflows
Tenant-isolated. Not self-learning. Not trained on client data. Supervision chain documented in every workflow.
Every system we build runs in a dedicated environment for your firm. Your precedent library, matter files, and client communications never enter a training corpus. This is an architectural constraint, not a policy promise.
Every workflow ships with a documented review chain consistent with Rules 5.1 and 5.3 — the supervision posture Opinion 512 and your state-bar opinions expect. Your attorneys are trained on the chain and the reasoning behind it, so the work holds up under an ethics partner review without slowing down the practice.
For firms that need to answer the malpractice carrier, the ethics partner, or the equity partners directly, the Ethics-Alignment Diagnostic produces the Opinion 512 alignment brief, the Rule 1.6(c) posture document, and the engagement-letter language as a stand-alone four-week engagement.
Where to start
Three workflows. Each built for firms at your scale.
Litigation drafting with verification
Contract review and clause benchmarking
Ethics-alignment diagnostic
AI engagement-letter & Rule 1.5 fee-billing pack
AI meeting recording compliance
Common questions
What managing partners and ethics partners ask before the working session.
What does ABA Formal Opinion 512 require of a midsize law firm?
Opinion 512 (July 29, 2024) maps six Model Rules to AI use — Rule 1.1 (technology competence), Rule 1.6 (confidentiality), Rule 1.4 (communication), Rules 3.1/3.3 (candor / verification of AI output), Rules 5.1/5.3 (supervision — AI is a "nonlawyer assistant"), and Rule 1.5 (reasonable fees). The most consequential interpretive moves are framing AI as a nonlawyer assistant for Rule 5.3 supervision and rejecting boilerplate engagement-letter consent for AI use on client confidences.
See ABA Opinion 512 in practice: the midsize-firm playbook and the glossary entry on Opinion 512.
What engagement-letter language does Opinion 512 require for AI use?
Opinion 512 explicitly rejects boilerplate "we may use technology to assist in our representation" language when AI use involves disclosure of client confidences. Specific consent identifies the AI tools by name or class, the categories of work they will be used for, and the data-handling practices that protect confidentiality (tenant isolation, no training on inputs, retention policies). A defensible engagement-letter pack has three clauses: a base AI consent clause, a carve-out clause for sensitive categories, and a disclosure-when-material clause aligned with Rule 1.4.
How does a midsize firm comply with Rule 5.3 supervision for AI?
Opinion 512 reads AI as a nonlawyer assistant under Rule 5.3, so partners have direct supervisory obligations comparable to those they hold for paralegals and contract reviewers. Compliance means: a documented review chain for each AI tool, initial training plus an annual refresher cycle, an incident-reporting protocol for any AI use that produces a substantive error, and supervision documentation the firm could produce on request. The discipline plugs into the existing Rule 5.3 program, not parallel to it.
See what ABA Opinion 512 actually requires of a midsize firm and the glossary entry on Rule 5.3.
Can a law firm bill for time saved by AI?
The California State Bar Practical Guidance (November 2023) is the most explicit on this: a lawyer may not bill for AI-saved time but may bill for time spent reviewing AI-assisted work product. ABA Opinion 512 aligns with this framing under Rule 1.5. Firms billing AI-assisted work in California-touched matters must distinguish AI-saved time from AI-review time in the matter file. Most state-bar opinions follow California's lead on this question.
See how Opinion 512 treats Rule 1.5 and the glossary entry on California's guidance.
What does AI deployment look like at a 25-attorney firm?
The practical pattern at 5–50 attorneys is one or two named tools (commonly Harvey or Casetext CoCounsel) deployed through a tenant-isolated enterprise account, integrated into specific workflows (litigation drafting, contract review, deposition summarization), with an attorney review chain that produces documentation for every output that touches a tribunal or a client. The firm-wide policy, the engagement-letter pack, and the supervision protocol are in place before the tools see real client work.
See what 8 midsize firms deployed and how the partnership reacted.
How long does an ethics-alignment diagnostic take?
Four to eight weeks, fixed-scope, fixed-fee. The engagement produces an AI-use audit, a partner-meeting memo, a practice policy specific to the firm's jurisdictions, an engagement-letter language pack, and an ABA Formal Opinion 512 alignment brief — the artifacts a malpractice carrier asks for at renewal. Ethics partner reviews each output before it goes to the partnership.
Does ABA Opinion 512 require client disclosure when using AI?
Opinion 512 requires the lawyer to consider client disclosure under Rule 1.4 (communication), and notes that disclosure is often the right answer — particularly when AI use is material to the work product or to the fee. It does not require blanket disclosure in every matter. The discipline is to consider, document the consideration, and disclose when material. State-bar opinions vary: NYSBA's April 2024 task-force report is the most disclosure-forward, while Opinion 512 itself is more nuanced.
The next step
A 90-minute working session. You leave with a written assessment specific to your firm.
You describe the problem your firm is facing — associate productivity, realization pressure, the competitive gap on transactional work, or the governance question underneath it all. We describe how we would approach it. You leave with a written assessment specific to your firm's practice mix and economics.
For 10-to-50-attorney firms.
Fixed scope, fixed duration, the capability kept by the firm.