What AI can do · Professional & advisory firms
AI in Consulting and Advisory Firms
In a firm like yours the constraint is not effort, it is that the same few people have to win the work, do the work and run the place. Here is what is genuinely running in firms your size, and where it helps most.
20 things AI is doing here
- 01Winning work3
- 02The work your practice area actually does5
- 03Doing the work4
- 04What you actually sell5
- 05What your firm knows2
- 06Running the firm1
Proven 2Working 15Early 3
Hear one working
This is the enquiry line, answering while the partners are out.
Not a recording and not a video of one. Press call as a prospective client would, to an operations and finance consultancy we set up to show you. It qualifies the enquiry, asks the question most firms skip, and books a partner without quoting a fee.
- Tell it your margins are slipping and see what it asks next.
- Ask what an engagement costs. It will not quote you.
- Ask for something outside its patch and watch it say no cleanly.
After-hours line
BlackSig Advisory
Elena, client enquiries
0:00
It is a demo, so the firm is made up. Calls are capped at three minutes.
Tap any of these to see what it does and what it takes. Add the ones that sound like your business and we will show you the system they add up to.
Winning work
Becomes Business Development System
Reply properly while they are still interested
Answers an enquiry immediately with a real, qualifying reply rather than a form receipt, and books the call.
- What changes
- How many enquiries turn into conversations. Harvard Business Review’s audit of 2,241 companies found an average first response of 42 hours and 23 percent never responding at all, and firms replying within an hour were nearly 7 times more likely to qualify the lead.
- What it takes
- A written standard for who is a fit and who is not, and a reply style you sign off. A few days of setup. The real decision is whether it sends or drafts.
For exampleAn enquiry arrives while you are mid-workshop. It gets a substantive reply in four minutes and a call booked, instead of waiting until Thursday.
The enquiry that arrives while you are in a workshop is exactly the one that currently waits two days. That is the gap this closes.
Draft the proposal off the discovery call
Turns the recording of the call plus your past proposals into a first-draft proposal, scope and pricing structure in your own format.
- What changes
- How fast a proposal goes out, and therefore how many go out at all.
- What it takes
- A library of proposals that actually won, and a pricing logic you can state out loud.
For exampleYou finish a discovery call at 3pm. By 4pm there is a proposal draft in your format, with the scope and pricing shape you actually use.
Your differentiator is the shape of the offer, so this is only worth doing on your real past work. Fed generic templates it produces generic proposals.
Keep the pipeline warm while you are delivering
Reads the CRM and inbox, finds the conversations that went quiet, and drafts the specific next message for each one from what was actually discussed.
- What changes
- Whether follow-up happens at all during delivery months. That is the difference between lumpy revenue and level revenue in a firm this size.
- What it takes
- A CRM with real notes in it, or a notetaker feeding it. This is the one that most often fails on input quality: if the CRM is empty, there is nothing to work from.
For exampleIn the middle of a delivery month you get eleven drafted follow-ups, each referring to what that person actually said on the call in March.
The work your practice area actually does
The generic list stops here. These are the jobs that only exist in certain practices, and they are usually the ones eating the most unbilled hours.
Becomes Delivery System
Build the medical chronology, not a summary
Turns a records production into a defensible dated table: every treatment, provider, finding and gap, with a page cite against each line.
- What changes
- The completeness of the record a case is valued on, and the days a paralegal spends building it. A summary is prose; a chronology is evidence.
- What it takes
- The records in machine-readable form, a defined column set, and a paralegal who verifies the cites.
For exampleFour thousand pages of records come back as a chronology with the three-month treatment gap defence counsel would have found first.
Keep the lien ledger straight before disbursement
Tracks every lien and reimbursement claim on a settlement, drafts the reduction requests, and chases the statuses, in the right order of priority.
- What changes
- Time from settlement to disbursement, and how many liens actually get reduced. It is the part of a personal injury practice nobody markets and everybody bleeds on.
- What it takes
- The correspondence, the plan documents, the provider statements and your case management system. The order matters: Medicare first by statute, Medicaid second, then plan claims where the plan document, not the lien letter, is what governs.
For exampleA settled case sits for eleven weeks waiting on a lien nobody chased. Next time the ledger flags it at week one.
The right answer here is a limit, not a capability. Funds subject to someone else’s claim sit in trust until resolved, and disbursing early is how lawyers lose licences rather than cases. AI builds the ledger and drafts the letters. It never touches the disbursement.
Draft the privilege log and keep the certification yours
Proposes log entries from the document set, with the basis for each withholding, ready for an attorney to check.
- What changes
- The single most hated task in litigation, and the one most likely to be done at 2am before a deadline.
- What it takes
- The review platform, a written protocol for what gets reviewed by a person, and a partner who understands the signature is theirs.
For exampleA 900-entry log comes back drafted, and the team spends its time on the eighty contested entries rather than the other 820.
Your signature on a discovery response is a certification you made a reasonable inquiry. Any workable protocol reviews every contested entry by hand and samples the rest.
Follow the money in a financial disclosure
Reads years of statements and builds the flow of funds: transfers between accounts, spending that does not match the declared income, the assets that appear late.
- What changes
- What gets found at all, in a case where the other side controls the paperwork.
- What it takes
- Statements in readable form and someone who knows what a suspicious pattern looks like.
For exampleThree years of statements show a monthly transfer to an account that was never disclosed.
Substantiate the credit study the way the form now wants it
Assembles the business component detail a research credit claim requires, in the structure the current form demands, from the project records you already keep.
- What changes
- Whether a claim survives examination, and how much of the study is rebuilt from scratch each year.
- What it takes
- Project and payroll records, and a preparer who signs off on the technical conclusions.
For exampleThe credit study gets assembled from timesheets and project notes rather than a fortnight of partner interviews.
Doing the work
Becomes Drafting and Research System
Turn the session into the deliverable before you leave
Takes the recording of a workshop, interview or coaching session and produces what the client was promised: actions, themes, the write-up, the follow-up email.
- What changes
- The gap between the session and the deliverable landing, which is the most visible quality signal a small firm has. A job that used to happen at 10pm happens in the ten minutes afterwards.
- What it takes
- A notetaker, consent to record, and a fixed template per deliverable type. The template is the whole job: without one you get a generic summary, with one you get your firm’s report.
For exampleThe workshop ends at 4pm. The themes, actions and write-up are drafted by 4:15, in your report format, ready for your edit.
Recording consent is now a live legal question rather than a formality. Several class actions were filed in 2025 against a major notetaker over recording without consent. Ask, every time.
Do the background research in an afternoon
Runs the market scan, competitor set or regulatory landscape for an engagement and returns a cited draft synthesis.
- What changes
- The unbillable research block at the start of every engagement.
- What it takes
- A research-capable model and a verification pass where someone opens the citations.
For exampleA new engagement in an unfamiliar sector starts with a cited landscape summary you spend an hour checking, rather than two days building.
The verification pass is not optional. The value is a faster start, not an unchecked answer.
Build the workbook, not just the deck
Produces the first draft of the workbook, slide deck, facilitator guide and exercises from your own methodology.
- What changes
- Build time per programme hour, which is the cost driver in anything you deliver repeatedly.
- What it takes
- Your methodology written down somewhere a model can read. If it only exists in your head, this is the prompt to get it out.
For exampleA new two-day programme gets a first-draft facilitator guide, workbook and exercises from your own methodology, ready to be made good.
Get more out of the programme you already own
Takes a programme that exists and produces the variants: the shorter version, the sector version, the self-serve version, the other language.
- What changes
- Revenue per unit of IP you already built and already paid for.
- What it takes
- The source material in a usable form and a review pass by someone who knows the material.
For exampleThe leadership programme you built for finance becomes a version for engineering teams, without rebuilding it.
Technically easy and commercially under-used, which is a rare combination worth looking at.
What you actually sell
The generic list stops here. If your firm runs assessments, programmes or cohorts, this is where the work and the risk really sit.
Becomes Productised Service System
Synthesise 360s and survey data without flattening it
Reads across the free-text comments and scores in a 360, engagement survey or culture diagnostic and produces the themes, the tensions and the outliers, ready for the consultant to interpret.
- What changes
- The days that disappear into reading comment fields before a debrief, on work you have already sold.
- What it takes
- The instrument data, your own interpretation framework, and a consultant who owns the read.
For exampleNine hundred free-text comments come back as themes with the quotes behind each one, and you spend your time on what they mean.
Interpretation is where the liability sits. Assessment publishers warn that general AI tools produce psychometric interpretations that read fluently and are wrong, because a language model works from how words co-occur, not from the outcome data the instrument was validated against.
Prove the programme worked, months later
Follows what actually changed after a programme: the behaviours, the manager’s view, the business measures the buyer cared about, rather than the smile sheet on the last day.
- What changes
- Whether you get renewed, and whether you can charge on outcomes. This is the perennial weakness of the category: half of organisations have any impact process at all, and only a small minority prioritise whether learning transfers.
- What it takes
- Agreement with the buyer up front on what will be measured, and a way to collect it later without chasing.
For exampleFour months on, you show the sponsor the three measures they named at the start, rather than attendance and satisfaction.
Keep a cohort moving between sessions
Runs the nudges, the pre-work chasing and the accountability between sessions of a multi-week programme, and tells you who is falling away.
- What changes
- Completion, which is what the sponsor judges you on, and which quietly decides whether they buy again.
- What it takes
- A participant list, a schedule, and a message sequence you would be happy to sign.
For exampleWeek three, eleven people have not done the pre-work, and they hear about it before the session rather than after.
Ignore any completion benchmark you are quoted. We looked: the published ranges contradict each other badly enough that none of them can be trusted. Your own numbers are the only comparison worth having.
Turn one programme into the versions you can license
Produces the facilitator version, the shorter version, the sector version and the translations from the programme you already run.
- What changes
- Revenue per unit of IP you already built, and whether train-the-trainer is a product or a wish.
- What it takes
- The source material in a usable form, and a review by someone who knows it well enough to catch a subtle wrong.
For exampleA two-day leadership programme becomes a licensed half-day version for a client’s internal trainers.
Sell the AI training your clients now have to do
Builds and keeps current the AI literacy programme large employers are now expected to run, differentiated by role rather than one deck for everyone.
- What changes
- A new line of work that landed on your buyers without them asking for it, in the exact place your firm already sells.
- What it takes
- Your existing delivery model, and enough regulatory reading to keep the content honest.
For exampleA client asks what they are supposed to do about staff AI training, and you already have the role-based programme.
What your firm knows
Becomes Firm Knowledge System
Make ten years of your own work findable
Puts a decade of proposals, decks, reports, transcripts and notes somewhere the team can ask questions of in plain language.
- What changes
- Retrieval time, and the founder’s role as the only person who knows where anything is or what was said to whom.
- What it takes
- Files in one place, permissions decided, and someone to set up the retrieval. This is the one most likely to stall on the tidying rather than the technology.
For exampleSomeone asks what you proposed to a similar client in 2021. You have the proposal, the notes and what they actually bought, in seconds.
Publish consistently without writing everything
Turns your existing raw material, talks, client calls with permission, positions you already hold, into drafts in your own voice.
- What changes
- Publishing consistency, which is the input to inbound enquiries in a reputation-led business.
- What it takes
- A real voice sample and a hard editorial standard.
For exampleA talk you gave becomes three posts in your voice, which you edit rather than write.
Be careful here. In a business sold on judgement, obviously generic content does more damage than silence.
Running the firm
Becomes Practice Operations System
Make the client report happen every time
Assembles the recurring report, retainer update or programme progress summary from wherever the data already lives.
- What changes
- Whether the report happens at all, and whether it happens on time in a busy month.
- What it takes
- The data somewhere it can be queried, and a fixed report shape.
For exampleThe monthly retainer update goes out on the first, in a busy month, without you assembling it the night before.
What you just built
Nothing picked yet.
Add anything above that sounds like your business. They group into the systems we build, so by the time you reach the form you are sending us a scope rather than a question.
Working with session and assessment data
How we handle what people say in the room.
Coaching notes, 360 comments and session recordings are the most sensitive material your firm holds, and the rules around them moved recently. Here is how we work.
- Consent before anything is recordedRecording is a live legal question rather than a formality, and notetaker vendors are in litigation over it. We design consent into the session, not the settings page.
- Records get disposed of, not just storedCoaching bodies require disposal of records, not indefinite retention. A notetaker left on its default setting is a breach waiting to be noticed.
- Interpretation stays with your practitionerAssessment and sentiment data can be processed. What it means about a person is read by the qualified human, which is also what the professional standards require.
- We know where the lines differAnalysing how someone sounds and analysing what they wrote are treated differently in law. Designing to the safer side of that line is cheaper than arguing about it later.
Being straight with you
What AI is not doing here yet.
It does not make your thinking better
The best controlled study of consultants using AI found large gains on tasks inside its competence and a 19 percentage point drop in accuracy on tasks outside it. The skill is knowing which is which, and that is still yours.
It will not save you as much time as the pitch says
The most careful measurement of AI time savings, from a Federal Reserve study, found an average of 2.2 hours a week for people who use it. Real, worth having, and nothing like the numbers in the ads.
Generic output damages a reputation business
Your clients buy your judgement. Anything that reaches them sounding like everyone else costs you more than the hour it saved.
Where to start
Which of these is worth doing first in your business?
That is the whole question, and it is what a roadmap answers. Tell us how your business runs and we will come back with what we heard and where we would start.
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