JOAN
Menu

Professional Services

More of the day on client work.

Modern systems and AI for professional firms, with your partners and professionals in charge of the advice.

Start a conversation See the numbers

Professional Services

Find past clauses in seconds, only from matters you work on.

Ask in plain words and get the exact clause, its date and its matter, without crossing an ethical wall.

Illustration: a lawyer searches past agreements for a liability clause and gets two matches from their own matters, with a note that one more match is in a matter they are not on.

Illustration. Names and details are invented.

What we hear

Where the work gets stuck

Four problems we hear from partners and managers of law, accounting, consulting, and architecture and engineering firms.

  • Hours go to admin instead of client work.

    Intake, time entry, status updates and formatting take up the day, and less of it ends up as client work.

  • Know-how sits with a few people and in old files.

    The best precedent is somewhere in a partner’s memory or an old folder.

  • Projects slip.

    Budgets and deadlines drift without anyone seeing it early. The client often notices first.

  • Client confidentiality comes first.

    Clients limit how their information may be used. Firms want AI’s help without putting that trust at risk.

The insight

Billable time is falling

Less of the day is billable, and more projects run late. Five years of benchmarks from professional services firms.

More than 1 in 4 projects were not delivered on time in 2024.

12 hours

a week: what professionals expect AI to free up within five years. The opportunity is to put those hours back into client work.

Source: Thomson Reuters, Future of Professionals, 2024

Source: SPI Research, 2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark (surveys of 403 to 709 firms a year; sponsored by Kantata). The firms span seven industries, including consulting, and architecture and engineering.

Read this chart as a list

A line chart from 2020 to 2024. Billable utilization at professional services firms peaked at 73.2% in 2021 and fell to 68.9% in 2024. Projects delivered on time peaked at 80.2% in 2021 and fell to 73.4% in 2024. Source: SPI Research, 2025.

The numbers

What is at stake

Every figure is from the named public source and year. Select a source to read it.

Stage by stage

Where engagement work slips

Choose a stage to see what slips today, where AI can help and what your people decide.

Stage 1 Win the work

What slips today
Every proposal is rebuilt from old files.
Where AI can help
Find past proposals like this one, and draft from your approved templates.
Your people decide
The scope and the fee.

What it looks like

The partner can start from the firm’s closest past proposal, not from memory.

Stage 2 Open the engagement

What slips today
Intake and engagement letters take hours of retyping.
Where AI can help
Draft the engagement letter from your template and the client file.
Your people decide
The terms, signed by the responsible professional.

What it looks like

The letter is drafted from your own template. The responsible professional edits and signs.

Stage 3 Do the work

What slips today
The best precedent sits in a partner’s memory or an old folder.
Where AI can help
Find matching past work in your own files, within your existing client walls.
Your people decide
What to reuse, and the advice itself.

About 3 hours

of an average lawyer’s workday is billed. Clio, Legal Trends Report, 2024

Stage 4 Track the engagement

What slips today
Budgets and deadlines drift, and the client often notices first.
Where AI can help
One weekly view of hours, budget and deadlines, with the ones at risk flagged.
Your people decide
What to change, and what to tell the client.

73.4%

of projects were delivered on time in 2024. SPI Research, 2025

Stage 5 Keep what you learn

What slips today
When senior people retire, much of what they knew is hard to find.
Where AI can help
Keep notes and final work where the firm can find them again.
Your people decide
What becomes a firm standard.

12 hours

a week: what professionals expect AI to free up within five years. Thomson Reuters, Future of Professionals, 2024

Where we would start

Three places to start

Each one uses information you already have. Your people make the decisions.

  • Find the precedent.

    A professional asks for past work like the matter in hand and gets matching examples from the firm’s own files, with links to the originals. Access can follow the firm’s existing client and matter walls, and the professional decides what to reuse.

  • First drafts from your own templates.

    Engagement letters, proposals and standard memos are drafted from the firm’s approved templates and the client file. The responsible professional reviews, edits and signs before anything goes to the client.

  • Engagement health each week.

    One view shows hours, budget and deadlines across live engagements, and flags the ones heading over budget or running late. The engagement lead decides what to change.

Old files, Email, Time entries, Templates joined into what the firm knowsSeparate tools (Old files, Email, Time entries, Templates) are drawn as dashed tiles, each joined by a line to one solid block: What the firm knows. Above it sits a plate: Your professionals decide.Old filesEmailTime entriesTemplates What the firm knows Your professionals decide
  • Your tools today: Old files, Email, Time entries and Templates
  • What the firm knows, owned by your firm
  • Your professionals decide
Old files, email, time entries and templates, joined into what the firm knows. Your professionals decide.

The difference

What changes with Joan

  • More of the day can go to client work, and less to paperwork.
  • Past work is easier to find and reuse, and what your senior people know stays the firm’s, even when they move on.
  • Late or over-budget engagements show up sooner, while there is still time to act.
  • AI is used within the limits your clients and your firm set, and a professional signs off.
How we build

Client work

Already at work in Professional Services.

See all our work

Security and compliance

What your compliance officer will ask

Three plain answers. Joan builds the controls; your firm decides how they meet its own obligations.

  • Can one client’s files be seen on another client’s work?

    Access follows your own engagement permissions, so each person sees only the client work they are on.

  • Is client work used to train AI?

    Joan does not train or fine-tune AI models on client data. When we set up AI for your team, we use business plans such as Microsoft Copilot or Claude Team. Their terms say your data is not used to train the provider’s models unless your organization chooses to share it.

  • Who signs off what goes to a client?

    Your professionals do. AI drafts and checks; a named person approves before anything reaches a client.

Joan does not train or fine-tune AI models on client data.

Security and data sovereignty

Keep reading

Useful for every firm

All insights

Next step

Tell us where the work gets stuck.

Tell us what slows your professionals down. Please leave out client and matter details.

Start a conversation