Client intake
New-client onboarding, KYC checks and conflict scans completed and routed for partner approval.
Industry
Professional services
Law, accounting, consulting — case intake, billing, document review.
The sector reality
How the sector operates today.
Professional services firms sell time, then spend it on work that does not produce a bill. Conflict checks, intake interviews, document review, drafting, billing reconciliation, client status updates — the chargeable hour shrinks under the weight of everything that surrounds it.
Knowledge sits in the senior partners and the long-tenured associates. Onboarding a new lawyer, accountant or consultant takes months because the firm's judgment is unwritten — it lives in the people who have already left for the day.
Documents are the operation. Contracts, filings, statements, working papers — produced, reviewed, redlined and stored across email threads, shared drives and the occasional rogue laptop. Finding the right version under deadline is its own line of work.
Client trust depends on responsiveness, but the model rewards billable depth. Junior staff burn out balancing both, senior staff become the bottleneck for every approval, and the firm grows linearly when the partners can see no other way.
Where Sommatic fits
A cognitive layer that shapes itself to your operation.
Sommatic handles the work around the chargeable hour. Intake, conflict checks, document classification, status updates, follow-ups — done by the cognitive layer under the firm's own protocols, freeing professionals to do the work the client is actually paying for.
Firm judgment becomes durable. Templates, criteria, redlines, precedent — captured once and applied consistently. New associates inherit the firm's reasoning, not just its file cabinet.
Document review accelerates without skipping a step. The layer extracts, classifies and flags issues; the professional reviews the flags. Hours become minutes for the routine; the judgment calls keep their full attention.
Every action carries actor, rule and evidence. Compliance reviews, malpractice audits and client questions are answered with a chain, not a reconstruction.
Common workflows
The first things the cognitive layer starts operating.
Document review
Contracts, statements and filings classified, key clauses extracted, issues flagged for the professional.
Drafting assistance
First drafts of routine documents — engagement letters, status memos, client updates — under the firm's templates.
Billing reconciliation
Time entries, expenses and matter budgets reconciled with engagement terms before the invoice goes out.
Client follow-ups
Status updates, deadline reminders and information requests handled in the firm's voice and timing.
What you will see change
Three things your team will notice first.
Billable hours stop getting eaten
Administrative work shrinks. The chargeable hour gets its full attention from the people who can charge for it.
Onboarding stops taking quarters
New associates inherit the firm's judgment encoded in workflows. Productive months instead of quarters.
Clients stop calling to ask for updates
Status updates land before they are requested. Trust grows quietly through consistent responsiveness.
Where you start
Your recommended entry point.
Start with case intake and document review. Add billing and client follow-ups when your associates want their time back.