Legal and Professional Services
Field note
“A technology plan that reaches the partners looking like a vendor proposal stalls. Put it in terms of client trust and the firm's standing to practice, and the conversation changes. I frame each decision the way the partnership already thinks and take it to the right committee once, so the answer holds.”
Paul Christian, Fractional CIO
Law firms run on confidential client information and partner time. In many of them the managing partner, or the partner who is good with computers, is the de facto CIO. That holds until a client's outside counsel guidelines arrive with a security addendum, or an associate asks whether the new AI tool may read a client's documents.
A fractional CIO for law firms takes that seat on retainer. The seat owns the case management system, document management, billing and trust accounting, client security questionnaires, and the firm's AI policy. Reporting runs to the managing partner or the executive committee, in the format they already use. Paul Christian leads this practice and teaches AI governance at the graduate level.
Why law firms call a fractional CIO
"We bought a case management system, and half the firm still runs on spreadsheets and email."
Case management systems usually fail on adoption, not features. We find out why attorneys and staff work around it: missing fields, duplicate entry, a workflow that doesn't match how matters actually move. We fix the process first, then the training, with one owner and one set of numbers the partners trust.
"Our matters live in three places, and nobody can see where one stands."
We map a matter from intake to close and find where it stalls or gets typed in twice. Then we connect case management, document management, and billing so a partner can see status without asking an associate.
"We're choosing a new case management system, and every vendor says they fit."
We write requirements from how your practice groups actually work, test vendors against your own matters, and read the contract for data export, support terms, and renewal pricing before anyone signs.
"Attorneys are using AI tools, and we have no policy."
Some are pasting client documents into public tools. Others are waiting for permission. We find out what is in use, write a policy the partners will sign, approve a short list of tools, and set rules for supervising AI-assisted work and telling clients about it. ABA Formal Opinion 512 covers competence, confidentiality, and supervision, and your state's rules apply on top of it.
"Every vendor pitches us AI. We don't know where it belongs."
We pick use cases where the data and process already exist, such as intake, document review, and time entry. We test them on real matters and put each tool through the same security and vendor review as everything else.
"A client's security addendum arrived, and nobody owns the answers."
We keep one register of what each client requires, a maintained set of approved answers, and one person who signs off before anything goes back. Our approach to customer security questionnaires. The same discipline covers trust accounting: who can change a payee or approve a disbursement, and what the logs show.
Tell us what the partners need to decide.
Send the client addendum, the partner agenda item, or the AI question that is waiting on an answer. It goes to a founding partner, who replies personally.
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