The Law firms & legal departments
The billable hour is fine.It's the other five we're after.
Most lawyers bill around a third of their working day. The rest disappears into intake, conflict checks, retyping, chasing signatures, and pre-bill edits. We embed an engineer in your firm, watch how matters actually move, and automate the administrative work around them, until at least 20 hours a month are back.
The systems your team already uses, wired through Passel automations. Your people review exceptions instead of retyping.
of a lawyer's day is billable
Clio Legal Trends · typical utilization
of the workday spent on administrative tasks
Industry surveys · small & mid firms
of billed hours actually invoiced
Realization rate · industry average
a month back, per team, or we keep working
Our written commitment
Small and mid-sized firms and in-house legal departments with 5 to 150 timekeepers. Litigation, transactional, estate, immigration, personal injury, or family practice; anywhere the same matter steps repeat with different names on them.
Figures are typical ranges from published industry surveys and our own audits. Your Gap Report replaces them with your numbers.
Why the hours go missing
Every matter is different. The steps around it aren't.
The legal work in a matter is bespoke. The administration around it is not. Intake asks the same questions. Conflict checks search the same systems. The engagement letter is last month's with new names. The pre-bill gets marked up the same way, for the same reasons, every cycle.
Firms know this, which is why they've bought practice management software, document management, e-signature, and billing tools. The problem is that each one solved its own step, and a person still carries the matter between them.
We build the connections those tools never shipped with, and add AI where it earns its place: first drafts from your own precedents, first-pass review, narratives checked against client guidelines. Attorneys keep every decision. They stop doing the transport.
The workflow map
13 things your team does by hand that it shouldn't have to.
Grouped by where they sit in your operation. Each card shows what happens today, what we build, and the time it typically gives back per person.
Front door
Intake & matter opening
New client intake
2–5 h/wkTodayWeb forms, calls, and emails retyped into the practice management system. The client is asked the same questions twice.
What we buildIntake flows straight into the matter. Contacts, file, and tasks are created and the client confirmation goes out automatically.
Conflict checks
1–3 h/wkTodayNames searched across systems and old matters one at a time. Results pasted into a memo.
What we buildEvery party checked across your systems in one pass, with the memo drafted for attorney sign-off.
Engagement letters & retainers
1–3 h/wkTodayLast letter copied, names and terms edited, sent for signature, then chased.
What we buildLetter assembled from the matter record, e-signature sent and tracked, retainer invoice raised the moment it's signed.
The matter
Doing the work
Document review & discovery
3–8 h/wkTodayProductions reviewed page by page. Relevance and privilege decisions logged by hand.
What we buildFirst-pass relevance and privilege tagging with the reasoning attached. Reviewers work the flagged set, not the whole box.
Drafting from precedent
2–5 h/wkTodayFind the closest prior document, strip it, redraft it. Every associate has their own folder of favourites.
What we buildFirst drafts generated from your own precedents and the matter facts, in your house style, for attorney revision.
Contract review & summaries
2–5 h/wkTodayEvery clause read and compared to the playbook from memory.
What we buildClauses extracted and compared to your playbook. Deviations listed with suggested language.
Legal research memos
1–3 h/wkTodayResearch and memo drafting with the same framing each time.
What we buildResearch organized and first-draft memos assembled with citations for attorney verification.
Deadline & calendar management
1–3 h/wkTodayCourt rules computed by hand and entered into two calendars.
What we buildDeadlines computed from rules and filings, synced to calendars, with reminders that escalate.
Billing & finance
Getting paid
Time capture & narratives
2–4 h/wkTodayTime reconstructed at day's end from emails and calendars. Narratives written twice.
What we buildDraft time entries from calendar, email, and document activity for the timekeeper to confirm or edit.
Pre-bill review & invoicing
2–6 h/wkTodayPre-bills marked up on paper. Edits keyed back in. Invoices held for weeks.
What we buildNarratives checked against client guidelines before review. Edits applied automatically. Invoices out on schedule.
Collections follow-up
1–3 h/wkTodayAged receivables chased with ad-hoc emails when someone remembers.
What we buildReminders sequenced by age and client, with the responsible partner looped in at the right point.
Trust accounting reconciliation
1–2 h/wkTodayThree-way reconciliation assembled monthly from bank, ledger, and client balances.
What we buildReconciliation drafted automatically with discrepancies flagged for review and sign-off.
Keeping clients informed
Client communication
Hours are per person, per week, typical range. Most operations run several of these at once, which is how an audit finds 20 hours a month across a team without anyone working differently.
Inside your stack
Built into the tools you already pay for.
Your practice management and document systems stay exactly where they are. We connect them, add the automation, and put AI behind the steps where a first draft saves an hour, all inside the tools your attorneys already open.
No new software to learn
Automations live inside the systems your team already opens every morning. If someone has to open a new app to feel the difference, we built it wrong.
Privilege and confidentiality, engineered in
Client data stays in your systems. Nothing is used to train anyone's models. Access is minimum-necessary and logged, and we hold our work to the same standard as our HIPAA program, which is independently verified through Live Compliance.
A person stays in the loop where it matters
Anything that touches money, a patient, or a client gets a human checkpoint by design. Automation does the retyping. Your people do the judgement.
Common questions
What firms ask us first.
Is it safe to use AI on privileged material? +
It is when the architecture is right, and it isn't when it's a consumer chatbot. We deploy models inside controlled environments where your data is not retained or used for training, with access limited to the matter team. We document exactly where data goes before anything is switched on, so you can answer a client's or a regulator's question about it precisely.
Our attorneys won't change how they work. Does this still help? +
That's the point of the model. We build around how your attorneys already work rather than asking them to adopt a new tool. Most of the hours come from staff and administrative workflows anyway: intake, conflicts, engagement letters, pre-bill cleanup, collections. Attorneys notice the difference without changing a habit.
What does the Observer capture on a lawyer's machine? +
Application-level activity signals: which systems are in use, how often the same sequence of steps recurs, and how long each cycle takes. Signals are aggregated at the team level and encrypted in transit and at rest. The telemetry scope, what the agent captures and what it never touches, is defined with you in writing before deployment. Many firms choose to run it on staff and paralegal desks first, then decide about attorney machines after seeing the first Gap Report.
Do you work with in-house legal departments? +
Yes. Contract review, intake from the business, matter tracking, and outside-counsel invoice review are among the most repetitive workflows anywhere, and legal departments rarely have engineering help of their own. The engagement works the same way.
Next step
Find out where the non-billable hours go.
One call, then two weeks with the Observer on every desk. We don't stop until at least 20 hours a month are back.
info@thepasselgroup.com