A capable AI tool is the engine. It is not a record your firm can defend. Even a tool with citation checking and confidentiality controls built in still leaves the firm responsible for supervising its use, deciding what client information may enter it, documenting that judgment in the file, and answering for who was accountable under the rules of professional conduct. A license produces none of that. My work assesses the tool you already run and builds the governance around it, so the efficiency you bought does not become exposure you never priced.
The professional obligations do not scale with headcount. The confidentiality, competence, and supervision rules that apply to a hundred-lawyer firm apply in full to a five-lawyer firm, and to a solo practice. What a small firm usually lacks is the in-house compliance function larger firms use to absorb the work, which means the exposure sits directly with the partners. A shared support pool, the way most small firms staff, concentrates the risk rather than spreading it: one staff member's habit touches every client's file.
Both matter, and both sit in a different place than this work. Malpractice coverage responds to a claim after something has already gone wrong. It does not build the supervisory record that keeps the claim from arising. IT secures the network and the devices. It does not make a professional judgment about what a paralegal may paste into which tool. Governance is the layer between them: the assessment and documentation that your carrier and your IT support both assume exists, but neither one creates.
In almost every firm, AI is already in use, just not inventoried. It is built into Microsoft 365, into legal research platforms, and into the phone in every staff member's pocket. That is the least defensible kind of use, because no one is supervising it. A decision not to use AI is itself a policy, and it only protects the firm if it is written down, communicated, and enforced. An informal prohibition that no one signed is not a defense. I can confirm what is actually running and help you put a real position in writing, whether that position is yes, no, or yes under conditions.
You can, and you will have a document. What a template cannot give you is the assessment behind it. A generic policy is not mapped to your tools, your jurisdiction, or your staffing structure, and a policy no one checked against how the firm actually works is paper, not a control. The value of the engagement is the six-risk assessment that identifies which provisions your firm needs, and the fit that makes them hold up under scrutiny. That is the part that does not come in a download.
That is by design. I do not practice law or offer legal advice; your attorneys own every legal judgment. I am an AI deployment risk and governance specialist who maps your firm's own professional obligations to the tools you are running, then builds the assessment, the framework, and the documentation that demonstrates reasonable supervision. I bring twenty years in technology, the AI Governance Practitioner credential, and a published methodology. Because I sell no AI product, I am the one party in the room with no incentive to tell you a tool is fine.
Fixed-fee engagement. No retainer.
No vendor stake in the recommendation.