The billable hour is not where the time goes.
Across the agency engagements in SUPALABS’s data, the average fee-earner loses 12–18 hours a week to non-billable admin: timesheets, status updates, scope-change paperwork, onboarding documents, the first draft nobody wants to start (SUPALABS engagement data, 2024–2026). In a commercialista’s office it is the scadenzario and the antiriciclaggio file; in a law firm the conflict check and the precedent search; in an engineering studio the tender documents. None of it is the judgement the client pays for. All of it is a queue.
- 30–50% faster deliverable turnaround in research-heavy work, concentrated in research and first draft (SUPALABS engagement data)
- Built on top of the practice management and document tools you already run
- The professional signs everything that leaves the firm
Put an agent on the queue, not on the org chart.
Each role owns one recurring queue. It drafts, it shows its evidence, and a named person signs before anything consequential moves. The last column is the sector’s AI Boundary Map: whether the step is mostly a rule, mostly a model, or stays with a person.
| Role | What it drafts | Who signs | What it reads | Mostly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client intake and onboarding | The onboarding file from the documents the client sent: identity and beneficial-owner checks assembled, the engagement letter drafted from the firm’s template, missing items requested. | The partner, before the engagement letter goes out. | Email attachments, the practice management system, the firm’s templates. | a model |
| Research and first draft | A first draft from the firm’s own precedents and the sources you approve, every claim linked to where it came from, and the parts it could not source marked as such. | The professional, who edits rather than starts. | The document store, the precedent library, approved databases. | a model |
| Time and scope-change capture | The timesheet reconstructed from calendar, email and ticket activity, and a scope-change note drafted whenever work appears that the engagement letter did not cover. | The fee-earner, who confirms rather than remembers. | Calendar, email, the project tool. | a model |
| Deadline calendar | Every deadline per client from the mandates and the regulatory calendar, with the documents each one needs and who has not yet sent them. | The office, weekly. | The practice management system, the regulatory calendar. | code and rules |
| Client status reporting | The weekly status per client from the project tool and the inbox, in the firm’s voice, with open questions listed rather than glossed. | The account lead. | The project tool, email, the CRM. | a model |
| Billing and work in progress | The invoice from approved time and scope, and the WIP position per client with anything unbilled for more than thirty days flagged. | The partner. | Approved timesheets, the engagement letter, the ledger. | code and rules |
How much of this is actually AI.
This is the one sector where the model does most of the drafting, because the raw material is text: documents, precedents, calendars, inboxes. Four of six queues need one. That makes the evaluation suite the artifact that matters most here, and it is why the professional signs everything that leaves the firm. In research-heavy consulting engagements SUPALABS has measured a 30–50% acceleration in deliverable turnaround, concentrated almost entirely in research and first draft, and almost none of it in the judgement a senior professional still makes.
2 / 6 queues mostly rules · 4 / 6 with a model
No client names. Real patterns.
Every engagement produces the same five documents, whatever the sector. What we can show is anonymised: the pattern, the number, and where it applies.
12–18 hours per week, per fee-earner, lost to non-billable admin across agency engagements; 30–50% faster deliverable turnaround in research-heavy consulting work (SUPALABS engagement data, 2024–2026).
Related case studies
Three tiers, set per task type, and you set the thresholds.
Every automated task runs at one of three levels of authority. The tier is set per task type rather than per system, so the same workflow can draft one step, wait for approval on another, and act alone on a third. A task moves up only when the evaluation suite shows the pass rate you defined as the threshold, and it moves back down the moment the monthly report shows a regression.
Nothing is promoted on our say-so. The thresholds are yours, the report that tests them is a named line item, and the decision log shows every action that was taken at every tier.
The full method: five artifacts, three tiers, four rungs →Four rungs. You can stop after any of them.
The problems, one at a time.
Frequently asked questions
The same method, other queues.
Thirty minutes to find out whether there is anything worth mapping.
The call is free, and we will tell you if the answer is no. Bring one queue that costs someone an evening a week.