We go through how your firm really runs: the enquiries that never convert, the time nobody recorded, the client asking for an update again. 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 them. What they are missing is someone who will look at their own matter list and say which part to hand over first.
Conflict check, ID and proof of address, client care letter, engagement terms, the matter set up on the system. None of it is legal work. All of it has to happen before any legal work can.
Your case management system has an AI button now. There is a drafting tool in every Law Society email you get. None of them tell you which job in your week they would actually take off you.
Six minutes here, a phone call there, reconstructed on Friday from memory and a calendar. Every firm knows what that costs and almost none of them have fixed it, because fixing it by hand means more admin, not less.
None of that is a technology problem. It is a question of which job goes first, and that is the bit we do.
These are the ones that come up in nearly every legal audit we run. Which of them lands in your plan, and in what order, depends on your practice areas, your team, and the system you already work in.
Enquiries arrive by phone, web form and referral, and a fee earner reads every one to work out whether it is even work you take.
Sorts the enquiry by practice area, checks it against the work you actually do, gathers the facts you always end up asking for, and routes it to the right fee earner with the background already in it.
Whether to take the matter, and anything that sounds like advice. Nothing that reaches a prospective client goes out unread.
Someone searches the system for the other side's name, then chases the client for ID and proof of address for a fortnight.
Runs the conflict search across matters and contacts, requests ID and source of funds through your own process, chases what is missing, and flags anything that needs a person to look at it.
Clearing a possible conflict, and signing off the risk assessment. That decision stays with the firm.
The precedent gets copied from the last matter, and someone finds the previous client's name still in paragraph four.
Assembles the client care letter, scope, terms and funding options from your own precedents against the matter type, ready to check.
The scope and the fee basis. A fee earner reads the letter before it goes, every time.
The same details keyed into the system, the ledger and the folder structure, three times, by hand.
Opens the matter, populates the parties, creates the folders, applies the right workflow for the practice area, and sets the key dates from the outset.
A fee earner confirms the matter type and the retainer before it runs.
Chargeable time reconstructed on Friday afternoon from a calendar and a vague memory of Tuesday.
Watches the work that already leaves a trail, the emails, the calls, the documents opened, and drafts the time entries with a narrative against the right matter, for a fee earner to confirm.
Nothing gets posted to a ledger without a fee earner accepting it. The narrative is theirs to correct.
Clients ring for an update because nobody told them anything since the last thing happened.
Drafts the update from what has actually moved on the file, on the rhythm you set, in plain language rather than legalese.
You read it before it goes. Anything about merits, risk or strategy is written by the fee earner, not drafted for them.
Paginating, indexing and hyperlinking a bundle the night before, then doing it again when three documents arrive late.
Assembles the bundle to the order you use, builds and renumbers the index, and rebuilds the whole thing when a document is added.
What goes in the bundle. That is a judgement about the case and it stays one.
Court deadlines and limitation dates in a diary, a spreadsheet and somebody's head, depending on who opened the file.
Watches the dates across every live matter, raises them with real notice, escalates when nothing has happened, and keeps the trail.
The date itself is calculated by a fee earner and confirmed. Nothing here is a substitute for a diary system you trust.
WIP sits unbilled because writing the bill narrative is the job nobody wants on a Friday.
Drafts the bill narrative from the recorded time, flags the WIP that has aged past your threshold, and runs your own reminder sequence on unpaid invoices.
What gets written off, and when a chase becomes a conversation. Both are yours.
Ringing round the office to find who did a matter like this before, and which version of the clause they used.
Finds the closest matters you have run, pulls the clauses and letters you actually used, and shows where they came from.
Whether the precedent fits this matter. It surfaces your own work, it does not decide anything.
Files stay open for months because closing one properly is twenty minutes nobody has.
Runs the closing checklist, drafts the closing letter, confirms the ledger is clear, and sets the retention and destruction date.
The final check that the matter is genuinely finished.
Nobody starts with eleven. 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 law firms, 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 matter list. 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 your firm runs, not a pitch.
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 it somewhere new is flagged, with the alternative, before it reaches the plan.
Nothing we recommend gives advice, signs anything, or makes a regulatory decision. The plan is explicit about which steps need a fee earner and which are administrative, because the accountability stays with the firm either way. Where an automation would touch something regulated, it goes in as a draft for a person to approve.
That is one of the first things we check. Some of it is the API, some is a feature your system already ships and nobody switched on, and some is email and a shared folder joined up properly. Where your system will not do something, the plan says so rather than pretending.
Only where you decide it should, and never on merits, advice or anything contentious. Most firms start with drafts a fee earner sends, then let the purely administrative messages go on their own once they have watched them for a few weeks.
It is usually the highest-value thing on the list, because the gap between time worked and time recorded is money you have already earned. What it does is draft entries from work that already leaves a trail. A fee earner still confirms every one before it posts.
Usually yes if your practice areas repeat, because repeating process is exactly what automates well. If you run a handful of genuinely bespoke matters a year, 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 intake and that does not need 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 firm runs, not about software. The plan lands about two weeks later.