A short, deliberate engagement that ends with the firm owning the system, the database underneath it, and the knowledge of how to change either one.
We sit at the desks where the work happens and watch it as it happens. Not as the org chart says it should, and not as anyone describes it in a meeting. The actual sequence of how a return moves from intake to filed, how a memo moves from question to issued, how a deal moves from term sheet to close.
The output of week one is a written record of every step, every artifact that gets passed between people, and every place where the firm's knowledge currently lives in someone's head, on someone's desktop, or in an inbox.
We send the firm the workflow we just observed, written out in the firm's vocabulary. The firm reads it and tells us where we got it wrong, what we missed, and what is genuinely settled versus what is still negotiated case by case.
We also propose, in writing, the database schema that will hold the firm's record: the cases, the prior engagements, the filings, the memos, the intake notes. Plus the specific places where AI work will sit on top.
We build in the firm's environment. The repository, the model access, the prompts, and the evaluations all live with the firm from day one. There is no "our infrastructure" that the firm depends on at the end.
We stay close enough to fix what does not survive contact with real files. Real files are not training-set files. They have inconsistent formatting, missing pages, partner-specific shorthand, and footnotes that contradict the cover memo. We watch what breaks and we fix it before the firm has to find a workaround.
At handoff, the firm owns the code, the database, the model access keys, and the documentation. A senior person at the firm can run a routine change without calling us. We provide written runbooks for the four or five things that go wrong most often, and a video walk-through of each.
When the underlying technology has advanced enough that the system should be rebuilt rather than patched, we are available for that engagement. Until then, the firm runs what we built.
Routine changes are made by the firm's own people, who already know the system and the work.