Matter intake and conflicts, standardized
Before
Intake arrives by email, conflicts are checked by hand, and two days pass before legal work starts.
After
One intake, one conflicts checklist, named owners. Matters open the same day.
Matters move faster when intake, review and billing stop being manual.
Intake and conflicts, contract review, matter management and time-to-bill are where firms and in-house teams lose hours to rekeying and chasing. The judgment, meaning the advice, is the product. Everything around it can be made predictable.
Where it starts, and what changes.
Read the "before" and find yours. Most legal teams start here and find that half of what they assumed needed AI didn't.
Matter setup and billing rules
Before
Matters are created manually, rates are found in an old engagement letter, and pre-bill review takes a week.
After
Approved intake creates the matter, tasks and rate table. Pre-bill checks run nightly; missing terms halt loudly.
The next two levels for legal, and what we typically see
First-pass contract review
Before
Lawyers locate and compare clauses from scratch on every contract before any judgment is applied.
After
An agent locates clauses, compares them to your playbook, and flags deviations with reasoning. The lawyer decides; nothing goes to a client without approval.
Playbook loop
Before
Which clauses get negotiated, and how it ends, lives in individual lawyers' memory.
After
Negotiation outcomes surface monthly; the practice group updates the playbook with the history kept.
Hours
per matter typically spent on intake, conflicts and setup before any legal work starts
30%+
of first-pass contract review time is commonly spent finding and comparing clauses, before any judgment
Days
of billing lag removed when time capture and pre-bill review are deterministic
New matter to first invoice: before, and after each level.
The left column is what we usually find. The right column is the same process, one level at a time, each step is paid for by the one before it.
KPIs that move, and who notices.
Baseline these before anything changes. The Survey instruments them; the Pilot is measured against them.
| Metric | How to measure it | Who it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Intake-to-open time | Hours from first contact to matter opened | Managing partner, ops |
| First-pass review time | Hours per contract to first marked-up draft | Practice group |
| Time-to-bill | Days from work performed to invoice sent | Finance |
| Realization rate | Billed and collected as a share of standard value | Finance, partners |
What you get when it's built this way
Lawyers on judgment
Clause hunting and setup leave the week.
Cash sooner
Billing lag and write-offs fall when pre-bill is deterministic.
Privilege and control
Everything runs in your systems; nothing of yours is hosted by us.
Systems legal teams usually run on and where we've built.
We start with what you own. None of these is a partnership we take margin on.
Questions legal teams ask before the first call.
Where should a legal team start with automation?
With matter intake and conflicts, standardized. It's the step that returns hours before any software is bought, and it makes everything after it cheaper. The assessment tells you whether your process is already past that point.
Do we need AI to improve new matter to first invoice?
Usually not at first. Most of the delay in new matter to first invoice comes from manual hops between systems, which deterministic rules remove. An agent earns its place only where the inputs vary, and we start it read-only.
Which systems do you build on in legal?
The ones you already run. We start with capability you license and nobody switched on, and we take no margin on anything we recommend. If a different tool would remove a real roadblock, you get the case and the switching cost in writing.
Thirty minutes. Worst case, you lose half an hour.
Bring one process. You leave knowing which level it's on, what to fix first, and whether it's worth doing anything at all.