Guide
AI for small law firms: what's actually worth doing
If your firm has five to twenty attorneys, you've probably ended up in one of two places. Either people are quietly using a general chatbot with nothing written down, or somebody priced the tools built for legal work, saw what a seat costs, and closed the tab.
Both are reasonable, and neither gets you very far. The useful answers sit in between, and they're mostly unglamorous.
Start with what you're already paying for
Practice management systems added AI over the last two years. Whether you have it depends almost entirely on which plan you're on, and you may not know which plan that is.
- Some products bundle it into the middle and upper tiers and charge nothing extra. If you're on one of those, you may already own the thing you were about to buy.
- Some sell it as a separate add-on per user per month, and it isn't available on the cheapest plan at all.
- At least one major product has no native AI whatsoever. If you're on that one, no amount of poking around in settings will help, and it's worth knowing that too.
The first useful step costs nothing. Open your billing screen, find out exactly which plan you're on, and read what that specific plan includes.
The legal research tools are a different question
AI legal research from the two big publishers is a real product, and it does real work. It's also priced well above what most small firms spend on software. The AI research features come inside the research plan. The AI drafting tools are a separate product sold on top of it.
Before you price one, check two things that cost nothing. First, see whether your state bar includes a research service as a member benefit, because several do. Second, see whether the cheaper research platforms cover the work you actually do. If your practice is ninety percent in one state and one or two areas of law, they often do.
The billable hour problem
If you bill by the hour, work that takes less time is worth less money. That's simple arithmetic, and the usual industry answer to it is weak. If you went out on your own partly to escape a heavy caseload, being told to take on six times the caseload isn't an attractive offer.
- Flat fee and contingency work. Time saved is money kept. No argument needed.
- Work you already write off. Intake, conflicts checks, chasing signatures, filing, the administrative tail on every matter. You lose nothing by making those faster because you weren't billing for them.
- The matters you currently turn away. The ones that don't fit your practice today.
- Straight hourly work with a full calendar. Often nothing. If that's your practice, this probably isn't your year for it.
What we would do first, in order
- Find out what plan you're on. It's free, takes five minutes, and decides everything after it.
- Find out what people are already doing. Somebody in your office is probably using a chatbot. Knowing what for is more useful than having a rule about it.
- Write down what's allowed. A paragraph is enough to start. Having something in writing matters more than getting the wording perfect.
- Fix one unbillable task. Pick the one everyone complains about. Small, cheap, and it settles the argument about whether any of this works.
- Only then price the expensive tools. By now you know what you'd actually need them for.
Want somebody to work through it with you?
That's what the audit is for. We go through it with you over a few sessions on a screen share, then give you a written report naming what to switch on, what to buy, and what to leave alone. We never ask to see client files.
None of this is legal advice.