How did a corporate law practice group improve operations and enable growth?
Scenario: A corporate practice group came to Workstorm seeking a way to manage matters at scale, standardize workflows, and effectively incorporate agentic AI to accelerate routine tasks, while maintaining the law firm’s governance and policies.
Challenges to address
Challenge 1: Limited financial and operational transparency
- Fixed fee matters often lacked real-time visibility into budget burn, staffing mix, and scope creep, making it hard to detect margin erosion until late in the engagement
- Key indicators, such as missed checkpoints, rework rates, off-template tasks, and delayed approvals, were dispersed across tools and threads, obscuring emerging risks and preventing timely course corrections
Challenge 2: Inconsistent matter management
- Each matter spun up its own ad hoc processes, creating variation in task quality, timelines, and reporting
- Critical decisions were buried in email or meetings, hindering continuity and onboarding
How Workstorm solved it
Challenge 1: Limited financial and operational transparency
- Cross-matter visibility
- Portfolio dashboards aggregated live status across active matters: milestones, blockers, staffing, and deadlines
- At-a-glance signals highlighted resourcing gaps, slipping timelines, and items awaiting review
- Customized report library
- Standard status formats made it simple to compare progress across matters and reduces reliance on spreadsheet consolidation
- Tasks, milestones, effort signals, and fee baselines fed into one analytics model so fixed-fee performance is tracked in real time (burn vs. scope, staffing mix, variance to plan)
- Operational signals (missed checkpoints, rework, off-template tasks, delayed approvals) were tracked in structured fields to produce early-warning and margin protection controls
Challenge 2: Inconsistent matter management
- Matter templates
- New matters were launched from practice-approved workflow templates
- Dependencies, required documents (linked drafts or memos), and approval steps were configured to drive consistent outcomes
- Decision logging and context capture
- Decisions log tied to tasks and files were maintained so teams can trace the rationale behind guidance and changes
- Threaded discussions within tasks kept context centralized and reduce side-channel confusion
- AI assistance with human guardrails
- Agentic AI streamlined routine steps, such as intake validation, document triage, and task plan recommendations, and improves consistency while freeing teams for higher-value work
- Human review gates for sensitive outputs were required and approvals were logged and auditable
- Privacy, security, and policy alignment
- Data handling was configured to respect confidentiality, ethical walls, and retention policies
- Audit trails for prompts, outputs, and approvals were maintained to support compliance reviews
Example operating model
- Intake
- Start each matter from a practice template → auto-create tasks, setup channels, and connect document management systems.
- Execution
- Attorneys collaborate in matter workspaces; AI assists with routine workflow and routes tasks through designated process.
- Oversight
- Practice leaders monitor dashboards for workload balance, risk indicators, and pending approvals; alerts notify owners before deadlines slip
- Reporting
- Weekly summaries generate from live data
- Audit logs ensure traceability for governance and training
Outcomes
- Consistent quality: Templates, required checkpoints, and decision logs drove predictable, defensible execution across matters
- Efficient scaling: Agentic AI accelerated routine work while preserving human control over outcomes, which enabled the practice to manage matters efficiently without compromising standards
- Better visibility: Real-time dashboards and standardized reporting gave leaders a clear picture of progress, profitability, and risk
Workstorm provided a secure, structured environment to unify practice communications, codify best practices, and adopt AI responsibly. The platform ultimately helped the corporate practice group operate with speed, consistency, and confidence, which improved the team’s ability to provide high value work to clients and maximize billing. Interested in a guided trial?
