The plan it gets back
For a high street firm with 26 to 60 people.
Start with
Your attendance notes.
40hours a month now, costing about £3,497 a month
That's 40 fee-earner hours at £87.42 an hour.
Over a year, 59% of one fee earner's chargeable time (Law Society median, 807 hours).
- What AI would do
- Draft each note from the fee earner's dictation or a meeting transcript, in your layout.
- What stays with your people
- The fee earner checks the note against what was said and signs it off.
Then look at these
- Client care lettersabout 15 hours, £803 a month
- Chasing clients for documentsabout 30 hours, £590 a month
Settle these first
- 01Agree a short AI rule that names the tools client information may go into. Some of your team may already use AI without one.
- 02Use tools that work inside your Microsoft 365, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, so client documents stay where they are.
- 03Name the fee earner who checks each output. They stay responsible for it, and your COLP should know the pilot is running.
How a four-week pilot would run
- 01Time your attendance notes for two weeks before you change anything.
- 02Pick one team to run the pilot, and name the fee earner who checks every output.
- 03Use your own files from the last few months, in a tool the firm has approved for client information.
- 04Run it for four weeks, then compare the hours and the quality.
- 05Carry on only if it saves time and the work is as good.
Support-staff time: £19.67 an hour, the ONS median hourly pay for full-time employees, April 2025, before employer costs. Fee-earner time: £87.42 an hour, the Law Society's 2025 median cost per fee earner (£70,551) over median chargeable hours (807).