Professional services
Bill for your expertise, not your first drafts.
Start with your proposals. Call-to-Proposal turns the discovery call into a first-draft proposal or fee proposal the same day, built from your best past ones, and it’s running in about a week.
30 minutes, no cost. You’ll leave knowing your first step.
Sound familiar?
- “I spent Sunday writing a fee proposal for a job we didn’t even win.”
- “My most senior people spend Friday afternoons on first drafts instead of billable work.”
- “If our founding partner retired tomorrow, half of what this firm knows would leave with her.”
In a firm of experts, the leak is unbilled time. Partners and principals write proposals and engagement letters at night, senior staff write the same memos, scopes and job descriptions from scratch, and the answer to “how did we handle this last time?” lives in one person’s head. Good work gets delivered and never written up, so the next proposal starts from “trust me.” The route starts with proposals because one comes before every engagement and the payback shows within weeks. Then comes the delivery document your team writes most often, then the firm’s know-how made searchable once permissions are set, and case studies last, because they need finished projects and client sign-off.
This page is for firms whose expertise is law, design, engineering, advice or hiring. If your firm builds software or runs IT, you likely have people who can build this yourselves, and a workshop will probably serve you better than a build. Accounting firms have their own page at /industries/accounting.
If that’s your week, here’s where to start.
Start here
Step 1 · Conversion
Proposals out the same day
Solution Call-to-Proposal
Start here because every engagement begins with a proposal or fee proposal, and your most expensive people write them in unbilled hours. It’s the quickest thing on this list to set up, about a week, and it’s built from work you’ve already done: your 2–3 best past proposals and your own pricing logic. The firm-wide projects can wait until the team has seen one clear win.
See how Call-to-Proposal worksWhat it looks like
A prospective client hangs up from a 45-minute discovery call at 4:15pm on a Thursday. By 5:00 a first-draft fee proposal is waiting, with the scope written in the client’s own words, and you rewrite the opening, check the fee and send it before you leave.
$43k
a year of partner time back
Illustration: 6 proposals or fee proposals a month, with 3 hours saved on each, at $200 an hour of partner time that could be billed instead. That’s 216 hours a year, before counting the work you win by sending the same day.
Every figure here is an illustration. On the call, I run it with your hours, your rates and your deal sizes.
Then add these, in this order
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Delivery
First drafts of the routine work
Solution Delivery Copilot
Second, because it takes more setup than proposals: a week of time logs to pick the task, a workshop to agree what good looks like, and about 20 worked examples. In this kind of firm the task is usually a document, such as a research memo, a scope narrative, a field report or a job description. We pick the one written most often that changes least, and your experts edit instead of starting from a blank page.
What it looks like
An engineer gets back from a site visit with photos and rough notes. The next morning a draft field report in the firm’s own format is waiting, and she spends about 45 minutes checking and correcting it instead of two hours writing it.
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Delivery
Answers without asking a partner
Solution Company Brain
Third, because it needs the most care: client files, confidential matters and anything else sensitive are scoped out before a single document is indexed. It pays off most in firms of about five people or more, where one or two senior people have become the help desk. The pilot starts with one folder, often past proposals and templates, which is the same material the first two steps rely on.
What it looks like
A project architect wants to know whether the firm has ever proposed on a school renovation over 40,000 square feet and what it charged for construction administration. She gets an answer with links to the two past proposals, without walking into the principal’s office.
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Advocacy
Every finished job written up
Solution Case Study Engine
Last, because it needs finished projects and client approval, and it pays off most once proposals already go out fast: each case study comes as a web page, a one-page PDF and a proposal insert. Architecture, engineering, consulting and recruiting firms get the most from it. Law firms should weigh client confidentiality and their state’s lawyer-advertising rules first, and many will publish anonymous write-ups or skip this step.
What it looks like
At the close-out meeting for a clinic expansion, someone answers one question: what measurably changed? A week later the client has approved a one-page case study, and it’s already in the proposal for the next healthcare project.
Works with what you already use
Existing tools first. Custom software only when nothing simpler will work.
Clio
Practice management for law firms: matters, documents, time and billing. The drafting work fits alongside it, and the matter record stays where it is.
MyCase and Smokeball
Practice management for small law firms. Same approach: drafts are prepared alongside, and your system stays the record of the matter.
Deltek Ajera and Vantagepoint
Project accounting, time and fees for architecture and engineering firms. Past fees and project history are useful inputs when a fee proposal is drafted.
BQE CORE and Monograph
Project management, time and billing built for A&E firms. Phases and budgets from past projects help ground the proposal draft.
Bullhorn
The ATS and CRM many recruiting and staffing firms run on. Job description and candidate summary drafting fits alongside it.
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace
Where your proposals, memos and templates already live. Some first wins start here, with AI features your plan may already include.
HubSpot
Where many consultancies track prospects and proposals. The proposal work fits alongside your deal records.
Granola, Fathom or Gemini in Google Meet
Off-the-shelf notetakers that capture the discovery call the proposal is drafted from. Typed notes work too where recording isn’t appropriate.
Leave these for later
- A custom AI tool built on your firm’s files, or your own trained model. It’s tempting, but the first wins come from tools you already pay for or can buy off the shelf, and custom software only makes sense once you know exactly which job it has to do.
- An AI assistant that gives clients advice directly, like a chatbot answering legal or engineering questions on your website. In a licensed profession, advice carries professional responsibility, so AI stays on the drafting side and an expert reviews everything that reaches a client.
- Buying Copilot or Gemini licenses for every seat before there’s one proven use. Licenses bought ahead of a clear job tend to go unused. Start with one job the team already does every week, and add seats once it works.
Client confidentiality comes first
Before anything is connected, I review what client information the work will touch, which client agreements and NDAs limit the tools you can use, and which plans keep your data out of model training. Business plans are chosen so their terms say your data isn’t used to train models, and settings are matched to your client agreements. For law firms, the ABA’s Formal Opinion 512 (July 2024) says lawyers who use generative AI need a reasonable understanding of the tools, must protect client confidentiality, may need a client’s informed consent before client information goes into some tools, and must keep fees reasonable. Your state bar may have its own guidance too. These points get reviewed with you during setup. This isn’t legal advice, and you and your own ethics counsel make the final call.
Questions about AI for professional services
Can a law firm use AI to draft engagement letters and proposals?
Yes, as long as a lawyer reviews every draft and client information only goes into tools you’ve vetted for confidentiality. The draft starts from your own past letters and fee terms. The confidentiality rules that apply are covered in the note on client confidentiality above.
Is it safe to put client information into ChatGPT or Claude?
It depends on the plan and its settings, not just the tool. Personal accounts can have different data terms from business plans, so I start by checking which plan you’re on, whether it uses your data for training, and what your client agreements and NDAs allow. That review happens before anything is connected.
What should a small architecture or engineering firm use AI for first?
Fee proposals, because every project starts with one and they’re usually written by your most expensive people after hours. After that, the routine document your team writes most often, such as field reports or scope narratives, is the next good candidate.
Can AI write job descriptions and candidate summaries for a recruiting firm?
Yes, AI can draft both from your intake call notes and your best past examples, and a recruiter checks each one before it goes to a client or a job board. That’s a good fit for Delivery Copilot, the second step on this page, because the format is much the same every time.
Do I need to tell clients my firm uses AI?
Sometimes, depending on your profession, your client agreements and what the AI touches. For law firms, ABA Formal Opinion 512 says informed consent may be needed before client information goes into some AI tools, and that clients should be told when it matters to them. Many client agreements have their own terms as well. I flag these during setup, and you decide with your own counsel.
Will AI replace the junior staff who write first drafts?
In most small firms it changes their work rather than replacing them: they edit and check drafts instead of starting from a blank page. The freed hours go to billable work, or to growing without hiring at the same rate.
What does it cost to get started?
It depends on where you start and how much setup that step needs. Each step is a one-time setup plus optional ongoing care, and you get a fixed quote before anything starts. I don’t publish prices, but on the free call I’ll tell you honestly whether the first step is worth it for your numbers.
Bring me one recent proposal and the call behind it. I’ll show you the first draft it could have started from.
30 minutes, no cost, no pressure.