Before any work begins, an audit. Two weeks. One report. The map of where intelligence belongs in your firm.
The diagnosis before the prescription.
An AI estate is not bought, it is built, and the only honest way to begin is to look closely at how the firm already works. Not the firm's idea of how it works, the firm as it actually is, on a Tuesday afternoon, with the matters that are open and the people who happen to be in the room.
The audit is two weeks of careful observation by an operator and a strategist. It produces a single document that the principal can read in an evening, share with the people who need to see it, and make decisions from. There are no slide decks.
What we look at.
- Workflows Where the firm's hours actually go. The recurring sequences of decisions and tasks that consume senior time without compounding.
- Data fragmentation Where the firm's information lives, who can read it, and which records the system would need to pull together to answer a single useful question.
- Repetitive labour The work that is performed by people because, until recently, only people could perform it. Most of it can now be done with judgment intact.
- Decision bottlenecks The handful of approvals, sign-offs, and reviews that quietly slow every matter. The points at which intelligence, properly applied, removes a queue.
- Knowledge silos What only one or two practitioners know, and what that knowledge would be worth to the firm if it could be asked a question.
What you receive.
- Workflow diagrams The firm's actual operating sequences, drawn plainly, with the points of friction and the points of leverage marked.
- An automation scorecard A short list of candidate workflows, each scored by effort, risk, value, and the quality of judgment that has to remain with the practitioner. A reading of where to begin and where not to.
- ROI projections Conservative, midline, and ambitious. Time recovered, hours redirected, work the firm can take on without adding seats.
- An implementation roadmap A sequence of engagements, in priority order, with the dependencies between them. The firm chooses how far to go. The audit does not commit to anything beyond the audit.
- A private briefing One unhurried conversation, with the principal and whomever the principal wishes to bring, to walk through the report and answer the questions it raises.
What it costs.
The audit is priced as a single deliverable, not by the hour. The figure is set after a brief conversation about the firm's size and scope, and is committed to in writing before any work begins. Most firms find it materially recoverable from the first engagement that follows. There is no obligation to commission further work, and many firms take the report and proceed in their own time.