Private & confidential
Where your team's time really goes — and the easiest ways to get it back.
We measured 10 business days across 26 computers — Attorneys (10) · Paralegals (8) · Intake (3) · Billing & admin (5). Not a survey, not interviews: how the work actually happened.
Things worth knowing
Nothing here is anyone doing a bad job. It's work that repeats, or happens in two places at once — exactly the kind that's easiest to hand off.
Time entries get rebuilt from memory, calendars, and sent-mail at week’s end — about 4.2 hours per attorney per week, and it under-captures. The activity record already exists; nobody has to remember it.
A prospective client hears “we’ll run conflicts and send the engagement letter” — then waits days. The screening, the conflict-check prep, and the letter are all template work.
Filing, naming, and profiling documents into the DMS is a daily chore done inconsistently across the firm — which is why finding things is a second chore.
Billing scrubs narratives, fixes codes, and chases missing entries across every matter — most of it pattern work an assistant can do to a draft standard.
All of this runs on your infrastructure with matter-level access controls — the same privilege posture you hold today, with fewer copies of everything.
Where the day goes
Share of active time by kind of tool, across all 26 measured machines — and where information gets carried by hand between programs.
| Information moves by hand | Into | Times / week |
|---|---|---|
| Email attachments | DMS (named + profiled) | 310 |
| Practice management (matter notes) | 260 | |
| Word / calendar / sent-mail | Time entries | 180 |
| Practice management | Excel (prebill scrub) | 110 |
| Phone intake | Intake form + conflict sheet | 80 |
Every row is a person being the integration between two programs. Connect the programs and the row disappears.
The opportunities, ranked
Ordered by where we'd start — payoff weighed against effort. The list adds up to the headline; where two touch the same hours, we sequence them rather than count twice.
| # | Opportunity | Team | Hours/yr | Value/yr | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | An assistant for email triage, drafts, and follow-ups | Everyone | 880 | $39,600 | quick win |
| 2 | Intake screening + conflict-check prep, same day | Intake | 610 | $27,450 | quick win |
| 3 | Engagement letters drafted from templates | Intake · Attorneys | 340 | $15,300 | quick win |
| 4 | Time entries reconstructed from actual activity | Attorneys | 720 | $32,400 | medium |
| 5 | Documents filed, named, and profiled automatically | Paralegals | 460 | $20,700 | medium |
| 6 | Matter-status updates drafted for client emails | Paralegals | 380 | $17,100 | medium |
| 7 | Prebill scrubbing to a draft standard | Billing | 330 | $14,850 | medium |
| 8 | Protecting drafting focus | Attorneys | 1,150 | $51,750 | bigger project |
| 9 | Instant answers across matters, dates, and documents | Everyone | 510 | $22,950 | bigger project |
A simple plan to get started
Start small; let the early wins pay for the bigger steps. The dollar figures are time you get back each year — not what setup costs.
- →An assistant for email triage, drafts, and follow-ups
- →Intake screening + conflict-check prep, same day
- →Engagement letters drafted from templates
Intake speed and email relief — visible to clients in the first month.
- →Time entries reconstructed from actual activity
- →Documents filed, named, and profiled automatically
- →Matter-status updates drafted for client emails
- →Prebill scrubbing to a draft standard
Practice management, DMS, and email joined — time capture stops being archaeology.
- →Protecting drafting focus
- →Instant answers across matters, dates, and documents
Focus protection and firm-wide answers — the deepest numbers, planned with the partners.
What year one looks like
Phases come online in months 2, 4, and 8. Monthly run-rate of time recovered, cumulative — conservative by design.
How you compare
Against the typical operation of your size and industry that we measure. Illustrative benchmarks — the point is where you sit, not decimal precision.
| Metric | You | Typical |
|---|---|---|
| Attorney hours/wk reconstructing time | 4.2h | 2–3h |
| Intake-to-engagement-letter turnaround | 3–5 days | Same day (automated firms) |
| Email filed to matters consistently | ~60% | 90%+ (automated) |
| Core systems API-ready | Yes | Usually |
A day for Paralegal 3 — before and after
Same person, same job, same morning. The difference is what the systems do on their own.
- ·8:15am — inbox triage: 40 emails filed to matters by hand, attachments renamed one by one
- ·Mid-morning — client status inquiries answered by digging through three systems
- ·2pm — documents profiled into the DMS from this week’s backlog folder
- ·Friday — helps two attorneys reconstruct the week’s time from sent-mail
- ·Median quiet stretch: 9 minutes
- ✓8:15am — overnight email already filed to matters, attachments named and profiled; exceptions flagged
- ✓Status inquiries answered from one place — or pre-drafted for the weekly update
- ✓The DMS backlog folder no longer exists
- ✓Time entries arrive as drafts built from real activity; attorneys review, not remember
- ✓The recovered time goes to substantive matter work
Your systems can already do this
Most of what we found needs connection, not new software. Automated Edge sets these up and runs them for you.
API-ready. Time reconstruction and prebill drafts flow from and to it.
Auto-filing with consistent names and profiles — findable because it was filed right.
Where the work actually happens; the assistant and the activity record start here.
Letter → signature → matter opened, one flow.
Watched automatically, calendared with the rules applied.
What we measured, computer by computer
Six of the 26 machines shown. Roles, never names — the goal is fixing workflows, not scoring people. Click any card for that machine's detail.
How this rolls out without breaking your week
The change-management is the product. Four rules we run every engagement by.
One person per team helps tune their own workflow first and shows the rest. Adoption follows proof, not announcements.
Every automation runs in draft-first mode before it acts — you see what it would have done for a week, then turn it loose.
Each change can be switched off in one step, independently. The old way keeps working until the new way has earned trust.
A standing monthly review: what saved time, what needs tuning, what to add next. The plan updates with the evidence.
| Wk 1–2 | Systems connected read-only; draft-mode assistants watching, not acting |
| Wk 3–4 | Quick wins go live team by team, champions first |
| Wk 5–8 | The system connections: the copying between programs stops |
| Wk 9–12 | First monthly review with measured savings; bigger bets scoped with real usage data |
How this was measured — openly
- ✓Every person was informed in writing before measurement began; signed acknowledgments on file.
- ✓Never captured, at any tier: keystrokes, clipboard contents, email bodies.
- ✓Roles are shown instead of names throughout this report — the goal is fixing workflows, not scoring people.
- ✓All captured data is encrypted, scoped to this company alone, and hard-deleted five business days after this report is delivered.
What happens next
Intake speed and email relief first — and the Assessment fee credits against it.
Practice management, DMS, and M365 joined on your infrastructure, matter-level access intact.
Time captured, intake turnaround, filing consistency — reviewed with the partners monthly.
This is the deliverable the Assessment produces for a business like yours — measured on your machines, tied to ROI, with the consent architecture on every page. The real one is built from your 10 business days.