Legal practitioners · documents and notes
Summarise long documents and draft first versions faster
The problem
Fee earners spend hours reading bundles and contracts and producing first drafts from precedents. Much of it is routine, but it can’t be skipped.
What you get
Faster first drafts built from your own precedents, and quick summaries of long documents with sources, always checked by a lawyer.
Three ways to do it
Indicative monthly running costs, not quotes. They exclude VAT and any one-off build or set-up work. Claude usage is based on Anthropic’s list prices for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5; other figures are rough estimates prepared in October 2026.
How it’s built
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Choose the tasks
Start with low-risk, high-volume work: chronologies, key-term summaries and first drafts of standard letters.
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Prepare your precedents
Curate approved templates and clauses, so the AI drafts from your standards rather than the internet’s.
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Set up a secure workspace
Use a business AI plan or internal app that doesn’t train on your data, with access controls for each team.
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Save standard instructions
For example: “Summarise this lease: parties, term, rent and break clauses, with clause references.”
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Always review
A lawyer checks every output against the source before it’s used.
How it fits common tools
- Microsoft 365 Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel connect through Power Automate, and n8n, Make and Zapier all support them. Microsoft Bookings is included in most business plans.
- Google Workspace Gmail, Calendar, Sheets and Drive have well-documented APIs and ready-made connectors in n8n, Make and Zapier.
- Zoho Zoho Bookings, Forms, CRM and Sign all have APIs, and Zoho Flow links them together. Make and n8n have Zoho connectors too.
- Clio Clio has an open API and integrations with Zapier and Make, so matters, contacts, tasks and time entries can all be automated.
- Other case management API access varies by vendor and plan (e.g. LEAP, Actionstep, Osprey). Some offer full APIs, some only exports, so check before choosing an approach.
- Xero or QuickBooks Both have open APIs and connectors in Make, n8n and Zapier, so invoices, payments and reminders can be automated.
- Spreadsheets Fine as a starting point. Once the automation is live, move the data into a proper database or list so it doesn’t break when someone renames a column.
- Paper forms Usually the biggest quick win: replacing paper with a phone or web form removes the re-typing entirely.
Watch-outs
- AI can invent case law or clauses. Verify every citation.
- Check your SRA duties, and tell clients when AI is used on their matter where appropriate.
Want this built for your firm?
Blue Tea is a UK-based software partner. We start with the problem, not the software: if an existing system already does the job, we’ll configure it. If it doesn’t fit, we’ll design and build something that does.
- ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified
- Strategy, design and engineering under one roof
- No obligation. Just a conversation about your process.