Use it on the drafting, summarizing, and searching that eats the week, and keep a lawyer's name on everything that leaves the office. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal or ethics advice. Your state's rules of professional conduct and your malpractice carrier decide what is allowed; I help you find the hours and set up the habits.
Where does AI save a small firm the most time?
In the work that starts from a blank page and ends with a lawyer's review.
- Routine letters. Engagement letters, status updates, demand letters from your own templates. The tool writes the first draft from the file notes, and the lawyer edits.
- Intake summaries. A new client call or intake form turned into a one-page summary of the facts, the dates, and the open questions.
- Research help. Tools that cite their sources, so the lawyer opens and reads every case or statute before it goes anywhere near a filing.
- First-pass document review. Sorting a stack of documents by topic, pulling dates into a timeline, flagging what looks relevant for a person to read.
- Billing and admin. Turning rough time notes into clean billing entries, drafting the scheduling emails, sorting the inbox.
What should a law firm never put into an AI tool?
Client confidential information goes only into tools the firm has vetted and approved in writing. Free consumer accounts often keep and train on what you type. Paid business tiers from the major vendors usually do not, but someone at the firm reads the terms and decides. The rule I write into every firm policy is short: if you would not email it to a stranger, it does not go into an unapproved tool.
Who is responsible when the AI gets it wrong?
The lawyer who signs it. A citation the tool made up is still the lawyer's citation. Every output gets read by a lawyer before it goes to a client, a court, or the other side. Build that review into the workflow so nobody skips it on a busy Friday. Most firms add one line to the file checklist: who reviewed the AI draft, and when.
What does it cost to get started?
- The AI you already pay for, a 90-minute on-site session, is $450. Most firms have AI features in their email and office software that nobody has turned on.
- A half-day workshop with your lawyers and staff, working on real tasks, is $1,500. See AI workshops.
- A one-page AI policy for the firm is $750: which tools are approved, what never goes in, who reviews what.
When the team needs help making it stick past the first month, getting a team to use the tools starts at $3,500 a month.
Have you worked with lawyers before?
Yes. I was part of a group project for Thomson Reuters discovering ways to bring AI into the Westlaw product lifecycle, and how lawyers would use AI as the tools mature. That work was about how lawyers research, check, and trust a source, which is the same question a small firm faces at its own desk.
Answered by Jared Lukes, Minneapolis. Twenty-five years in brand, UX, and technology, currently holding fractional AI and technology seats at three companies. About Jared.