What we do · Discover

AI strategy

Four weeks inside your firm - interviews, workflow analysis, maturity scoring and market evidence - ending in an AI strategy your partnership can actually vote on.

4 weeks5 phases1 partner-ready strategy
The premise

A strategy written from the outside in is just a deck

Most law firm AI strategies are assembled from vendor pitches and conference notes. They read identically from firm to firm, they commit to nothing testable, and they are quietly shelved within a year. The problem is not ambition - it is that nothing in them is anchored to how the firm actually operates.

A strategy worth having starts from evidence: how work really moves through your firm, where you are genuinely mature and where you are not, what the market is actually deploying rather than announcing, and which opportunities justify the risk of moving. We spend four weeks building that evidence base with you - then make the calls, with reasons your partnership can interrogate.

The method · Four weeks

Five phases, one argument

Each phase produces a working document, and together they build the case: what is true today, where you stand, what the market runs, what is worth doing, and what to do first.

Phase 01 · Week 1

Understand how the firm actually works

Strategy starts with the gap between how work is supposed to move through the firm and how it actually does. We interview across the partnership and the functions around it, then map the workflows where time and margin really go.

  • Stakeholder interviews across practice groups, knowledge, BD and IT
  • Workflow analysis on live matter types, not org charts
  • Review of the tools and pilots already in flight
Phase 02 · Week 2

Assess maturity and strategic position

We score the firm against a maturity model built for law firms - data readiness, tooling, skills, governance, client posture - and locate your strategic position: where your practice mix is exposed to commoditisation, and where it is defensible.

  • AI maturity scored capability by capability against the market
  • Exposure analysis across the practice mix
  • Data and knowledge assets reviewed as product raw material
Phase 03 · Weeks 2-3

Benchmark against what peers actually run

The market scan separates deployed from announced. What peer firms actually run, what in-house teams now do for themselves, and where the vendor market is heading - grounded in what we see as builders, not in analyst decks.

  • Peer moves tracked and verified: live, pilot or press release
  • In-house and client-side capability shifts
  • The vendor landscape without the gloss
Phase 04 · Week 3

Map the opportunities and price the risks

Every credible opportunity is scored on client value, feasibility and adoption risk - and every call is priced against what building actually costs, because we build these products ourselves. The result is a shortlist, not a wish list.

  • Opportunity matrix scored across the whole firm
  • Risks logged against each move, not in an annex
  • Build, buy, partner or wait - each with reasons attached
Phase 05 · Week 4

Set the strategy and the first moves

The final week turns evidence into a strategy your partnership can vote on: a six-to-twelve month roadmap with owners and dates, governance that will not strangle it, and an external narrative the firm can credibly say out loud.

  • A sequenced roadmap with owners named
  • Governance and decision rights that fit a partnership
  • The positioning story for clients, partners and talent
What you leave with

Documents built to be used, not filed

  • The partner paper

    A concise strategy paper written for the partnership - the evidence, the calls, and the reasons behind each one.

  • Maturity assessment

    Where the firm stands today, scored against the market. The baseline every later decision gets measured against.

  • Opportunity map

    Every opportunity scored and plotted, the shortlist circled, the rationale attached.

  • The roadmap

    Six to twelve months of sequenced moves with owners, dates and decision points.

Why Purple

Strategy priced by people who build

Most AI strategy is written by people who will never have to ship it. Ours is priced against the real thing: we design, build and launch legal AI products, and legaltech we have built runs in over 150 UK and US firms. When we recommend build, we know what it costs. When we recommend wait, we can show you why.

See what those products look like in our work, or read the argument behind our view of the market in A Theory of the Future of Law.

The first step

Get a strategy your partners will back

Four weeks from first interview to a strategy with evidence behind it. If you would rather start smaller, that is what the first call is for.