AI agents for law firms

A small firm is usually a few lawyers with paralegals, legal assistants and one person who runs the office, billing and trust records. The lawyers carry the legal judgment. Everyone else keeps the matters moving: answering new enquiries, typing names into the conflict search, reading scheduling orders and court notices, chasing clients for documents, and preparing engagement letters.

The work that piles up is the in-between work. Clients call to ask where their matter stands. Pre-bills get marked up by hand against each insurer's billing guidelines. The trust ledger, the client ledgers and the bank statement have to agree every month. Closed files sit in boxes with nobody sure which may be destroyed.

An agent handles the reading, sorting and first drafts, so staff time goes on checking.

• Sorts new enquiries, asks only what is needed to check conflicts and fit, and lists possible name matches for a lawyer before any consultation is booked.
• Reads a scheduling order or CM/ECF notice, drafts each deadline with the paragraph it came from, and counts dates under the rule, for the docketing clerk to confirm.
• Drafts monthly matter status updates from the matter record for the lawyer to approve.
• Flags pre-bill entries that break a client's guidelines: block billing, vague notes, missing UTBMS codes.
• Compares the trust ledger, the sum of client ledgers and the bank statement and lists every difference for the three-way reconciliation.
• Keeps a per-matter checklist of what each client still owes the firm, and a closed-file retention tracker.
• Indexes deposition transcripts and exhibits on a local model, with page and line for every entry.

The agent gives no legal advice and makes no legal determinations. Whether to take a matter, every conflict decision and waiver, fee terms, anything filed with or sent to a court, and the signature on a trust reconciliation stay with a lawyer. The agent never moves trust money and never sends a client message on its own: it drafts, and a lawyer approves before anything leaves the firm. Confidentiality under Rule 1.6 and the duties to prospective clients under Rule 1.18 shape the build, so privileged material goes only to a local model or a closed system the firm has approved, and intake forms ask for little. Interns and agents are nonlawyers under Rule 5.3, so the firm keeps a register of its AI tools and trains staff on how they may be used.