AI Assessment Report — Pemberton Legal LLP

Executive Summary

The headline from your discovery call.

Pemberton Legal LLP is a 14-person family law and residential conveyancing firm in Bristol. Based on your discovery call, the practice is losing roughly 16 hours a week to work that could be fully or partially automated — primarily manual client onboarding, repetitive document chasing, and time spent generating standard correspondence that fee earners should not be touching.

The biggest single opportunity is deploying an AI assistant to draft routine client letters and standard responses to enquiries. Claire in your team described spending "two to three hours a day just writing the same emails" — at your billing rate, that is over £20,000 a year in fee-earner time on admin. This can be reduced by around 80% using a custom Claude-powered assistant trained on your firm's precedents and tone.

The four quick wins in this report will save an estimated 14–18 hours per week at a combined tool cost of approximately £187/month. Payback on this assessment is under three weeks.

Your Top Opportunities

Ranked by impact and ease of implementation. Quick Wins are achievable within your first 4 days.

AI assistant for drafting routine correspondence

Claire and James both mentioned spending 2–3 hours daily writing the same categories of letter: initial client care letters, update emails, chaser emails to lenders, and responses to standard enquiries. A Claude-powered assistant briefed on your firm's style, precedents, and typical client scenarios can produce a publication-ready first draft in under 30 seconds. Fee earners review and send rather than writing from scratch. Conservative saving: 8–10 hours a week across the team.

Quick Win

Automated new client intake and onboarding sequence

You described your current onboarding as "a lot of back and forth" — sending the client care letter, chasing ID documents, and following up manually when things are not returned. Setting up an automated email sequence via HubSpot means the moment a new matter is opened, the client receives a branded welcome email, a link to upload their ID, and automatic chasers at day 3 and day 7 if nothing arrives. Your team only gets involved once everything is in. Saves approximately 3–4 hours a week.

Quick Win

Automated diary reminders and deadline tracking

You mentioned that critical deadlines "sometimes rely on someone remembering" and that the firm uses a spreadsheet to track exchange and completion dates. Motion can sit on top of your existing calendar, flag matters approaching key dates, and send automated reminders to the responsible fee earner and the client. This prevents the missed-deadline risk and removes the 45 minutes a day someone spends manually checking the diary spreadsheet.

Quick Win

Fathom AI for meeting notes and file notes

Fee earners currently write up file notes manually after every client call — James estimated this takes 15–20 minutes per call, and he has 6–8 calls a day. Fathom joins every call, transcribes in real time, and generates a structured file note automatically. Notes are in the format you need, ready to copy into your case management system. At 8 calls a day across the team, this saves roughly 2 hours a day.

Quick Win

Integrated reporting dashboard across Practice Evolve and Xero

You mentioned that your monthly management reports take "most of a Friday" to pull together from Practice Evolve and Xero into a single spreadsheet. A Make.com automation can pull the key numbers nightly and push them into a live Google Sheets dashboard — WIP, billed, collected, and matter pipeline — so management reporting becomes a 15-minute review rather than a day's work.

Strategic

AI-powered first-response to website enquiries

Website enquiries currently land in a shared inbox and wait for someone to pick them up — you mentioned a typical response time of 4–6 hours. An AI-powered intake form and auto-response can qualify the enquiry, confirm receipt instantly, provide useful process information, and alert the right fee earner based on matter type. First impressions improve and nothing sits unacknowledged.

Strategic

Impact vs. Effort

Start top-left. Move right when you have more time or budget to invest.

← HIGH IMPACT LOW IMPACT →

★ Start here — Quick Wins

AI drafting assistant for correspondence
Automated client onboarding sequence
Fathom AI for call notes
Motion for deadline reminders

High impact — plan these next

Practice Evolve + Xero reporting dashboard
AI-powered website enquiry handling

Nice to have

Automated client satisfaction surveys post-completion

Deprioritise

Nothing here — your tech stack is in good shape

LOW EFFORT HIGH EFFORT →

Recommended Tools

Specific tools matched to what you told me in the discovery call.

Claude (Anthropic) — AI Correspondence Assistant

Fee earners writing the same letters and emails from scratch, every day

~8–10 hrs/week

What it does

Drafts client care letters, update emails, chaser letters, and standard responses in your firm's exact tone — from a short brief in plain English

Difficulty

Easy — no technical setup, works in a browser

Cost

Claude Pro: £17/month per user. Start with 2 licences (£34/month)

Day 1 Action

Go to claude.ai and sign up for two Pro accounts (one for Claire, one for James). Copy one of your existing client care letters and one update email into the chat with the instruction: "This is how our firm writes. Learn this style and tone." Then ask it to draft a new client care letter for a first-time buyer matter and compare it to what you would normally write. Adjust with feedback until the output is right.

Fathom — AI Meeting Notes

Fee earners spending 15–20 minutes writing file notes after every client call

~2 hrs/day

What it does

Joins Zoom and Teams calls, transcribes in real time, and generates a structured file note ready to paste into Practice Evolve

Difficulty

Easy — install, connect calendar, done

Cost

Free for individuals. Team plan £15/user/month for shared summaries

Day 1 Action

Go to fathom.video, sign up free, and install the Chrome extension. Connect your Google or Microsoft calendar. Fathom will automatically join your next Zoom or Teams call. Run one call today and review the output. If it is good enough to paste straight into Practice Evolve, roll it out to the whole fee earner team this week.

HubSpot Free CRM — Client Onboarding Sequences

Manual back-and-forth chasing ID documents and sending the same onboarding emails

~3–4 hrs/week

What it does

Sends a branded welcome email when a new client is added, then automatically chases ID and documents at day 3 and day 7 if they have not responded

Difficulty

Medium — takes about half a day to set up initially

Cost

Free (HubSpot's free tier is sufficient for this use case)

Day 1 Action

Go to hubspot.com/products/crm and sign up free. Connect your firm's email account. Create a new Sequence with three emails: (1) welcome + ID request link, (2) day-3 chaser, (3) day-7 chaser. Use Claude to write these three emails in your firm's tone. Test by adding a real new matter — you should see all three emails queue up automatically.

Motion — AI Deadline and Priority Scheduling

Critical dates tracked in a spreadsheet, manual diary checks every morning

~45 min/day

What it does

Flags matters approaching exchange or completion dates and sends fee earner and client reminders automatically

Difficulty

Easy — integrates directly with Google or Outlook Calendar

Cost

£19/user/month — start with one licence for your conveyancing lead

Day 1 Action

Go to usemotion.com and start a 7-day free trial. Connect your calendar. Add the next 5 active conveyancing matters with their key dates. Motion will automatically build reminders. If the auto-generated schedule looks right, migrate your full matter list from the spreadsheet — and delete the spreadsheet.

4-Day Quick Wins Plan

Specific tasks, in order. You can do all of these without any technical help.

Day 1 — Monday

Get your AI drafting assistant live

Sign up to Claude Pro at claude.ai (£17/month — do Claire's account first)
Paste 3 of your best existing letters into Claude with "learn this tone and style" as the instruction
Ask it to draft a new client care letter for a conveyancing matter — refine until it is right
Save the starting prompt as a pinned note so Claire can reuse it every time

~60 minutes total

Day 2 — Tuesday

Set up Fathom for call notes

Go to fathom.video — sign up free and install the Chrome extension (5 minutes)
Connect your Google or Microsoft calendar so it auto-joins calls
Run your first real client call with Fathom active — review the summary after
If output is ready to paste into Practice Evolve, send the sign-up link to the rest of the team

~30 minutes setup, then it runs itself

Day 3 — Wednesday

Build your automated onboarding sequence

Sign up to HubSpot free at hubspot.com and connect your firm email
Use Claude to write 3 onboarding emails in your firm's tone: welcome, day-3 chaser, day-7 chaser
Build the sequence in HubSpot (Sequences → New Sequence — paste in the three emails)
Test by enrolling a dummy contact and confirming all three emails fire correctly

~3 hours — block the morning

Day 4 — Thursday

Replace the deadline spreadsheet with Motion

Start free trial at usemotion.com — connect your conveyancing lead's calendar
Enter your next 10 active matters with exchange and completion targets
Check the auto-generated reminders match what you would expect — adjust where needed
Delete the deadline spreadsheet. You will not need it again.

~90 minutes

Financial Impact

Conservative estimates based on your call. Fee earner time valued at £85/hour (blended rate you provided).

Opportunity	Hrs/wk saved	Monthly value	Tool cost/mo
AI drafting assistant (Claude Pro x 2)	8–10	£3,060	£34
Fathom call notes	2	£680	£0
HubSpot onboarding sequences	3	£1,020	£0
Motion deadline tracking	0.75	£255	£19
Reporting dashboard (Make.com)	6	£2,040	£29
Total — all opportunities	~19–21	£7,055	£82

Assessment pays back in

weeks

£999 one-time investment
÷ £4,796/month net saving*
= 1.8 weeks to break even

*Quick wins only, after tool costs

What Comes After the Quick Wins

Longer-term opportunities that will compound your gains once the foundations are in place.

What you can do yourself

Once your AI drafting assistant is working, the natural next step is building a library of saved prompts — one for each letter type you send regularly. This takes about a half day to set up and means any fee earner can produce a quality first draft. HubSpot also has a free forms feature that lets you replace your current PDF instruction sheet with an online client portal — roughly 2 hours to configure.

Where support adds real value

The Make.com integration between Practice Evolve, Xero, and a live reporting dashboard will need about 2 days of build time. It is not something you would want to attempt without technical support — the API connections require configuration beyond no-code. This is exactly what our No-Code Automation Setup service handles end-to-end: we build it, test it against your real data, and hand it over with documentation so you can maintain it.

SMEAutomate services — if you would like help implementing any of this.

Process Optimisation

Map, fix, and document your highest-friction workflows before automating

From £3,000

No-Code Automation Setup

Practice Evolve + Xero reporting dashboard, built and handed over in 2 weeks

From £1,500

Custom AI Assistant

A Claude assistant trained on your firm's precedents, style, and matter types

From £3,000

AI Agent Implementation

End-to-end AI intake and client communication workflow for your website

From £5,000