UK boutique law firm (composite, anonymised)
Cutting first-pass discovery review 70% inside the firm tenant
−70%
First-pass review hours
The challenge
A 40-fee-earner UK litigation boutique was losing margin on fixed-fee disclosure exercises. First-pass review of discovery production routinely consumed 400–600 associate hours per mid-size matter — work the client would not pay for at full rate, but the firm had to do for privilege screening and relevance tagging before substantive review could begin.
The solution
Deployed an Azure OpenAI + AI Search classifier inside the firm’s own Microsoft 365 tenant. Pipeline ingests the disclosure production, tags each document by custodian, date range, doc type and topic, and flags potential privilege candidates for human review. Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels per matter prevent cross-matter leakage. The deployment memo — covering data residency, retention, audit and the duty-of-competence narrative — was signed off by the firm’s GC and shared with their PI insurer before go-live.
Outcomes
- First-pass review hours cut ~70% on the three matters measured
- Privilege-flagged subset reviewed by a partner inside one day (vs one week)
- Zero cross-matter data leakage incidents in 6 months of operation
- Deployment memo accepted by the firm’s PI carrier without premium uplift
The pattern, applied to your business
See this pattern in your own business
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