Client plans (part four): AI and the evolution of the client team
Over the past three weeks we’ve focused on foundations.
Build the right plan > Operationalise it > Deepen the relationship.
Now we add the accelerator.
But AI in client planning isn’t one thing. It operates at three very different levels of maturity. And after six months of conversations with UK law firms on embedding AI into BD, sales and client relationship management, a clear pattern has emerged.
Most firms are experimenting at Level 1.
One or two are cautiously exploring Level 2.
Nobody IN THE LEGAL INDUSTRY is close to Level 3.
Here’s what you need to think about as you move through the levels. Enjoy.
Level 1 – efficiency
At Level 1, AI behaves like a capable assistant.
It monitors client websites and flags news. It drafts standard client reports. It summarises meeting transcripts. It prepares first-cut briefings.
This is helpful. It saves time and removes friction around client team admin.
We are seeing a handful of firms doing this reasonably well. But let’s be honest. This is optimisation. You are doing the same things, just faster.
If your client planning discipline is weak, AI at this level simply produces more polished paperwork.
Useful? Yes. Transformational? Not yet.
Level 2 – the knowledge hub
Level 2 is where AI becomes more interesting.
Here, it begins to connect disparate systems. Finance data. Matter history. CRM notes. External news. Regulatory updates.
Instead of just reporting activity, it surfaces patterns.
It can identify revenue concentration risk. It can highlight under-served practice areas. It can detect declining instruction frequency. It can spot regulatory shifts affecting multiple divisions of a client.
This moves client planning from anecdotal to analytical.
In our discussions, one or two firms are beginning to connect systems. None have a view across all client data held by their firm. This is largely a combination of legacy system architecture and permissions issues. Some vendors are touting the “single customer view” experience. Again, no one we’ve seen has yet to place every piece of this jigsaw puzzle.
But this is where advantage starts to form. Pattern recognition beats memory every time.
Level 3 – the agentic client team member
Level 3 is different.
Here, AI is not just connecting systems. It is connecting intelligence across the firm and the client.
It understands the client’s history, business model and future growth objectives better than any single individual within your firm. It understands your firm’s capabilities. It sees what work the firm is already delivering elsewhere. It identifies expertise that has never been introduced to this particular client.
And it begins to suggest and then nudge you into action.
It might highlight that your employment team has deep expertise aligned to the client’s recent hiring trends. It might detect that regulatory changes affecting one division mirror work your firm is delivering for another similar organisation. It might spot that a practice area thriving with a competitor has never been positioned with this client.
The key difference is this: the intelligence is not only external. It is internal. It is based on what the firm is already doing, just not yet connecting.
At our sister company, Legal Engine, we’ve been testing this model on ourselves and across our own customers and targets. The result? Deeper client insight and the surfacing of opportunities that the human team had simply not spotted.
Not because they lacked capability.
Because no individual sees the entire map.
This is the shift from assistant to embedded digital team member.
Chat to Tina by voice, when you’re between meetings, on the commute to/from work, or heading into something you’d rather avoid.
The reality check
AI will not fix weak client planning.
If objectives are vague, relationships are shallow and no time is protected, AI will simply accelerate inefficiency.
But if the foundations are strong, AI becomes seriously accretive.
It turns client planning from periodic discussion into continuous intelligence.
In competitive panel environments, the firm that understands the client fastest, deepest and most holistically will win.
The question is no longer whether AI will sit inside client teams.
The question is which level you’re operating at.
We’re building a team of voice enabled AI assistants to support you with BD activities and allow you to spend more time being human. Interested? We’d love to chat.
