75% faster at reading. 40% faster at the engagement.
Both numbers are true. The first measures one activity out of seven — the one a machine is genuinely good at, and the largest single block, which is exactly why it is the one that gets quoted.
- 78h
- the engagement today
- 46.7h
- after, all seven activities
- 31.3h
- saved — 40%
- 45,385
- at the blended rate
340 contracts, 78h, seven activities
The solid part of each bar is what a machine removes. Three activities do not move at all.
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First-pass reading
26h · 75% addressable
−19.5hThe activity every demo measures. It is also genuinely the largest single block, which is why the overstatement is so tempting.
-
Drafting the report
14h · 35% addressable
−4.9hAssembling findings and their citations gets faster. Deciding what the client needs to be told, and in what order, does not.
-
Second look at what was flagged
11h · 30% addressable
−3.3hA human has to satisfy themselves about anything that will appear in the report. Being taken to the clause helps; the judgement does not compress.
-
Chasing missing documents
9h · 40% addressable
−3.6hKnowing what is missing gets much faster; getting somebody to send it does not. The addressable half is identifying the gap on day one instead of week three.
-
Client calls and follow-ups
8h · not addressable
—Explaining a finding to somebody who is going to make a commercial decision on it. This is the work.
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Internal review and sign-off
6h · not addressable
—A partner reads it. Nothing on this page changes that and nothing should.
-
Scoping and set-up
4h · not addressable
—Agreeing what is in scope and what the client is actually worried about. A conversation, and not a long one.
Reading is 33% of the engagement and takes 75% off. Applied to everything else it comes to 31.3h, which is 40% — and the difference between quoting that and quoting 84,825 is 39,440 of a business case that would not survive the first invoice.
Four things the percentage does not tell you
The second one decides whether this is worth buying at all, and it is a question about your fee arrangement rather than the software.
- The saving lands unevenly across the team
- Almost all of it comes off the junior end. Partner hours barely move, which is fine on a fixed fee and is the entire problem on an hourly one.
- Fixed fee changes the sign
- On a fixed-fee review the saved hours are margin. On an hourly engagement they are revenue you no longer bill, and firms should work out which they are running before deploying anything.
- It shifts work earlier
- Knowing on day one that eleven documents are missing is worth more than the hours it saves, because it moves the chase to a point where the client can still act on it.
- The second pass gets better, not shorter
- Being taken straight to the clause does not reduce the judgement. What it does is stop a reviewer forming that judgement on the fourth document of the afternoon.
Where this estimate breaks
The third is the one we would rather sell on and cannot, because it does not produce a number.
- These fractions are estimates
- They come from what deployments have actually shown rather than from a model, and they will differ for your work. The point of the table is the shape, not the second decimal.
- The first review is slower
- Loading a playbook, aligning documents and correcting the first hundred findings costs more than it saves. The saving arrives from the second engagement.
- Quality is the real return, and it does not show here
- The strongest argument for this is not the hours. It is that the reviewer is fresh at document 300, and nothing in a time-saving table captures what that is worth.
- A faster wrong review is worse
- If the retrieval misses an amending document, the whole engagement is quicker and incorrect. Speed multiplies whatever the quality already was.
31.3h on a 78h engagement, arrived at honestly, is a good outcome. It is also the second-best reason to do this — the first is on the list above and does not fit in a table.
The other outcomes
Keep the file in the Kingdom
Where documents go, and where they do not.
Draft in both languages
Arabic and English that agree with each other.
Never miss a limitation
Counted from the trigger event.
Bring research in-house
Stop paying counsel to look things up.
Get juniors productive
The precedent bank a first-year does not have.