Part 10: AI in your industry, and on the floor

Where does AI help a professional services firm?

Written lesson · about 4 minutes to read

The short answer

AI helps a professional services firm with the work around the advice: proposals drafted from your own past work, long documents summarised with the passage cited, time entries drafted from the calendar, and client intake. Settle confidentiality first, and keep the advice and the signature with a person.

Three things to remember

01Proposals, summaries, time entries and intake can be drafted by AI, and a named person reviews each.
02Ask for summaries with the passage quoted and the page cited, so the signer reads the source.
03Client files go only into business plans whose terms you have read, never a free personal app.

Proposals and intake

You have written this proposal before, probably many times with the names changed. Give the AI your won proposals, your scope language and your case studies. Given a prospect's email or call note, it finds the most similar past proposals and drafts from them: the approach, phases, team and terms you always use, in your voice, flagging what is different this time. The partner edits and sends.

Intake works the same way. Before the first meeting, the prospect answers the questions you always ask, in a conversation rather than a form. The tool turns the answers into the intake record and a one-page brief for whoever takes the meeting, and the conflict check can run on the names before anyone has spent an hour.

Documents in, summaries out

Clients send hundreds of pages. AI does well at a first pass over a long document: what it is, the parties, the dates and the unusual terms. It can compare two versions, search a hundred documents for the one that mentions a thing, and list every deadline in a file. Each takes a person hours and the tool minutes, and each is a starting point, not the answer.

It reads badly in the middle of a long document, which it tends to skim, and it misses a clause that only means something against another clause forty pages away. Work in sections, ask the same question of each, and ask what is missing that you would expect to see. Ask for the passage quoted and the page cited, so the person who signs reads the passages, not only the summary.

Time capture, and what stays with a person

Hours worked and never written down are a leak in most firms. At the end of the day the tool looks at the calendar, the emails sent and the documents edited, and drafts time entries: client, matter, a plain description and a duration. The person who did the work corrects and confirms in minutes instead of rebuilding the week on Friday.

The advice, the signature and the conversation about the fee stay with a person, along with anything a regulator or a court would ask who decided. A proposal should never carry a fee, a named person's availability, a result you did not achieve or a client name you may not cite unless a partner has put it there.

Confidentiality comes first

A firm's whole business is other people's confidences. That does not rule out AI, but it rules out the casual version. Client documents belong only in business plans with training use off, retention stated and terms you have read yourself, never the free consumer app on someone's personal login. Whether a tool can meet those terms shapes the shortlist before any feature does.

Decide what never goes in: anything a client has said may not leave the firm, and anything covered by a client's own rule on where data is processed. Strip names where a placeholder would do. Duties of confidentiality differ by profession and by state, so check your own with your professional body or a lawyer.

Where to start this week

List the AI tools your people already use on client work and on which accounts. Then write a one-page policy: approved tools and accounts, what may go in and what may not, how to strip a document first, and who to ask. Review it twice a year.

Then pick one workflow that is small and reversible. Time capture is contained and measurable. Proposals need an afternoon first to gather your best wins and tag them by service. Write down the hours the task takes today, and keep a partner's name on everything that leaves.

Next lessonWhere does AI help a dental or medical office?

More in part 10

Next step

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