Firms sell judgement and bill for time, and too much of both goes into reading, rekeying and assembling documents. We help law, accounting and advisory firms use AI on that work while keeping client information where your confidentiality obligations say it must stay.
A firm's value rests on clients trusting it with information they share with nobody else. Solicitors work under conduct rules that require client information to be kept confidential, accountants work under a professional code that treats confidentiality as a fundamental principle, and engagement letters often add terms of their own. Privilege, where it applies, depends on confidentiality being maintained. Every AI tool a firm adopts has to fit inside those duties.
The practical risk usually starts somewhere ordinary. A graduate pastes a draft advice into a public chatbot to tidy the wording. A partner switches on Microsoft Copilot and discovers it can answer questions from a matter site that was shared with the whole firm years ago. Microsoft states that Copilot only surfaces data a user already has permission to view, which means the tool is only as well contained as your SharePoint and Teams permissions. Our permissions audit guide explains why this is the first thing to check, and the post on staff leaking data into public AI tools covers the other half.
Regulation is adding work too. AUSTRAC's AML/CTF reforms now bring accountants, legal professionals and conveyancers who provide designated services into the regime, with customer due diligence and record keeping obligations that firms have to run alongside client work. Our guide to AML/CTF Tranche 2 for accounting firms sets out what that involves.
Firms come to us with a specific problem. These are the common ones.
Licences budgeted, with matter and client files in SharePoint and Teams that nobody has reviewed for access.
Due diligence, discovery or contract portfolios where staff read hundreds of documents to find the same clauses.
Fee earners reconstructing timesheets at month end and narratives written in a rush before billing.
Customer due diligence and screening now required, run from spreadsheets and email.
Practice management, Xero or MYOB, document management and CRM holding different versions of the same client.
Staff already using AI tools individually, with no approved list and no rules on client material.
Permissions and sharing link review across matter sites, client folders and Teams, checked against your ethical walls, then containment and labelling before any pilot.
Extraction of defined terms, dates, parties and non-standard clauses into a review table, with a lawyer or accountant checking every flagged item.
Draft time narratives from activity data for fee earner approval, plus pre-bill checks that catch missing or inconsistent entries.
Customer due diligence intake, screening steps and record keeping built into the client onboarding flow, with audit trails.
Client document collection, Xero and MYOB data preparation and multi-entity reporting, so staff spend time on review instead of entry.
An approved tools list, rules on client material, review requirements and a register of AI use that partners can stand behind.
Read more on legal document review, contract term extraction, time tracking and billing and Xero and MYOB automation for accounting firms. The build work runs through our process automation and system integration services.
See what this would take in your business
A free 30-minute review on Microsoft Teams. Bring the process you want fixed and leave with a clear first step.
Self-hosted options are covered by our private AI infrastructure service, and the trade-offs are explained in the data sovereignty guide.
We set timeframes after discovery. Engagement options are on our pricing page, and firms still deciding where AI fits can start with AI strategy.
Further reading: Privacy Act compliance and AI, tax compliance automation for accounting firms and AI advisory for professional services. Once tools are live, our managed AI services keep the reviews running.
Book a 30-minute scoping call. Tell us which work eats the most non-billable time and what your clients expect about their data, and we will suggest where to begin.