We go through how your files really move: the onboarding pack nobody returns, the enquiries you answer twice, the update calls that eat the afternoon. Then we tell you which of it is worth handing to AI, and in what order.
Most firms know AI could take some of this off the fee earners. What they are missing is someone who will look at a real matter and say which part to hand over first.
Clients ring. Agents ring. The other side rings. Every one of them wants a two-sentence answer that is already sitting in the file, and every one of them takes a fee earner off the matter they were actually working on.
Your case management system has an AI module now. There is a drafting tool in every legal newsletter. None of them will tell you which part of a residential purchase they would take off a fee earner this month.
A general chatbot will happily invent a completion date, or summarise a lease it has not read properly. On a regulated file with an SRA obligation attached, confident and wrong is the worst possible combination.
None of that is a technology problem. It is a question of which job goes first, and that is the bit we do.
These come up in nearly every conveyancing audit we run. Which of them lands in your plan, and in what order, depends on your caseload, your team, and the case management system you already work in.
The pack goes out, half of it comes back, and somebody chases the rest for a fortnight before the matter can properly open.
Sends the pack, walks the client through identity verification, chases exactly what is outstanding, and tells you when the file is genuinely complete.
The risk assessment and the decision to accept the retainer. Source of funds is reviewed by a person, always.
Clients and agents ring for a status that is already in the file, and each call takes a fee earner off the matter in front of them.
Sends a written update at each milestone to the client, the agent and the introducer, in your wording, so the phone rings less.
Anything that has gone wrong. Delays and problems are a call from a person.
The same twenty enquiries come back on every transaction and get answered from scratch each time.
Sorts incoming enquiries against the file, drafts the routine replies from your own precedents, and puts the unusual ones in front of a fee earner first.
Every reply is checked and sent by a fee earner. Nothing goes to the other side unread.
Searches, management packs, indemnity policies and mortgage offers, all tracked in somebody's head and a spreadsheet.
Tracks what each file is waiting on, chases the right party on your own timings, and escalates the ones that have stalled.
Deciding when a chase becomes a phone call to the other side.
Reading a long lease to pull out the same fifteen points you pull out of every long lease.
Produces a first-pass summary against your own checklist, with every point linked back to the clause it came from.
The review. A fee earner checks it against the document and owns the advice that follows.
Quote requests arrive by phone, email and web form, and the slow ones are the ones you lose.
Collects the details, produces the quote on your own scale, and follows up the ones that go quiet.
Anything unusual, and every fee decision that is not standard.
The same sequence of calls and emails on every file, run from memory under time pressure.
Drives the checklist, prompts the right party at the right time, and drafts the client's completion instructions.
Exchange itself, and anything involving money. A person makes those calls.
Assembling the file at the end, hunting for the document that proves a step you know you took.
Files as the matter runs, flags what is missing while it can still be fixed, and prepares the file for closing and archive.
Sign-off before archive, and anything a compliance review flags.
Introducers ask for pipeline updates and somebody builds the report by hand, late, once a month.
Pulls the pipeline for each introducer and drafts the update on the day you said it would go.
The relationship. The report is not a substitute for a call.
Registration follow-ups, the thank-you, and the review request that nobody has time to send.
Runs the post-completion sequence, tracks registration, and asks for the review at the point the client is actually pleased.
Anything the client replies to comes straight back to you.
Nobody starts with ten. A plan usually puts two live in the first month and leaves the rest ranked and waiting, so when you have the appetite for the next one you already know which it is.
Most of the job is joining up the systems you pay for rather than moving you off them. These are the ones we come across most in conveyancing, and we have no affiliation with any of them.
Three steps. You do the talking on the first one, and nothing is committed until you have seen what we found.
No prep, no agenda to fill in. We ask the questions and you walk us through how your week actually runs: the jobs, the tools, the emails you send a dozen times a month.
Recorded and written up, so you never repeat yourself.
We work back through the call and map where your time actually goes. Then we find the automations that suit your tools, your team and your budget, ordered so the biggest time saving comes first.
Back with you within a week.
We walk you through the whole report, recommendation by recommendation, and you decide what to take on first. Most people have their first automation running within a week of that call.
The report is yours to keep either way.
The plan tells you what to build. The dashboard shows you what it is doing once it is built, so you can see what you are getting back without asking us.
Set up when the plan is delivered, at app.fewerhours.com under your business name. No shared login and nothing to install.
Every one we build reports the hours it saved and the work it handled, so the value is a number you can check rather than a promise we made.
The rest of the ranked list sits there waiting. When you have the appetite for the next one, you already know which it is.
This works best where a partner can still see the whole caseload. There are a few cases where it would waste your time, and those are worth saying out loud.
Fewer Hours exists because too many owners knew AI could help them somewhere and had no way of telling a good idea from a sales pitch. The plan is the boring part done properly: sitting with the real workflow and working out which jobs are worth handing over.
Whoever takes your call is the person who writes your plan. No account manager, no junior doing the analysis, and nobody trying to move you onto a retainer at the end of it.
Three steps, and you can stop after any of them. The first one is a conversation, and nothing about it commits you to the next.
A short chat about how your business runs. If there’s nothing here worth mapping, we’ll say so on the call.
The full job. We map the workflows, score every candidate, and hand over the ranked list and the 30-day plan.
If you’d rather we built the projects than just planned them, we’ll do the ones the audit put first. Anything from a quick win to a full agent build.
If there are fewer than five of you and admin takes about an hour a day, there probably isn’t enough here to be worth mapping, and we’ll say so. If you already know exactly which job you want automated, skip the audit and just ask us to build it. And if your processes only exist in your head, we’ll tell you to go and write them down first.
If yours is not here, ask on the call. It is twenty minutes about how the practice runs, not a pitch.
The SRA's position is that solicitors may use these tools provided they remain accountable, supervise the output and protect client confidentiality. So the plan never puts a machine where a regulated person has to exercise judgement. It drafts, collects, chases and summarises, and a fee earner owns everything that leaves the building.
Every recommendation states what data it touches and where that data ends up. Keeping client and matter data inside systems you already control is the default, and anything that would move confidential information somewhere new is flagged, with the alternative, before it reaches the plan.
It drafts. A fee earner sends. Nothing goes to the other side, a lender or a client without a person reading it first, and the plan is explicit about which steps require that.
That is one of the first things we check. Some of it is the API, some is a feature your case management system already ships that nobody switched on, and some is email and a shared sheet joined up properly. Where your system will not do something, the plan says so rather than pretending.
Not on its own, and the plan does not suggest otherwise. A first-pass summary is a way of getting a fee earner to the right clauses faster, with every point linked back to the source so it can be checked. The advice is still the fee earner's.
Usually yes, because in a small firm the chasing lands on people who should be doing fee-earning work. If your caseload is small and bespoke, we will probably tell you to save your money.
The plan lands about two weeks after the call. Most firms have the first automation live within a week of that, because the first one is usually onboarding or update messages and neither needs anyone to change system.
Either. The plan is yours to take to anyone, including whoever supports your case management system. If you would rather we set up the first two, that is a separate job and you decide after you have read the plan.
The call takes twenty minutes and it is about how the files move, not about software. The plan lands about two weeks later.