An AI spine running live in a UK legal services firm
From a first workshop to daily production use: insurance claims assessed end-to-end, a sixteen-mailbox operation triaged, and the system now extending into drafting, reporting and complaints. Live means live — what's in build is marked as in build.
Insurance claims and related legal work. Named on request, with the client's agreement.
Not a pilot, not a demo. Extending firm-wide.
The same pattern as a manufacturer's quoting desk or a professional firm's casework.
The same person who runs every Expul engagement.
Expert judgement, applied one file at a time
Assessing an insurance claim properly means reading everything on the file — the policy, the correspondence, the evidence, the history — and applying a method that the firm's most experienced people carry in their heads. Each file took skilled time; the quality of the assessment depended on who picked it up; and the know-how that made the firm good at this was not written down anywhere a new person could use.
Around the casework sat the usual small-firm reality: a sixteen-mailbox operation where incoming post, client email and insurer correspondence had to be read, sorted and routed by people, before any real work could start.
The spine, then the first build, then the rest
- Map. A workshop with the founder and the people doing the work: how a claim moves through the firm, what each person needs to know, and what the firm's method actually is when written down.
- Spine. The firm's own material — case files, policies, precedents, correspondence — indexed and tagged, with access scoped per person, so the AI answers from the firm's material rather than general knowledge.
- First build: claims assessment, end-to-end. The system reads the whole file, applies the firm's method, and produces a draft assessment with its reasoning and sources attached, for a person to review and sign off. Nothing leaves unreviewed.
- Second build: mailbox triage. Incoming items across sixteen mailboxes are read, classified and routed to the right person and file, with the people keeping the final say.
- Extend. With the spine in place, each further workflow is a smaller job than the last.
What's live today, and what's in build
- Insurance claims assessment, end-to-end, with human sign-off Live
- Triage and routing across a sixteen-mailbox operation Live
- Legal drafting from the firm's precedents In build
- Weekly management reporting In build
- Complaints handling In build
- Marketing drafting In build
We only publish results we can support. Measured before-and-after figures for this engagement will be added here once agreed with the client; until then we'd rather say less than claim more. If you'd like to talk through the numbers, ask.
For the firm, and for the owner
The firm's method for assessing a claim is now a written, running asset rather than a habit of its most experienced people. New staff work to the firm's standard from day one, because the system guides them through it and checks the output against it. Skilled people spend their time on judgement — the review and the decision — rather than on reading and sorting.
For the owner, the business depends less on memory. The know-how has an author, a date and a history. It keeps working when the expert isn't in the room, and it belongs to the firm rather than to any one person.
Why this transfers to your business
Strip away the sector and the pattern is familiar: a few people hold the method, the material is spread across files and mailboxes, and growth is capped by how many files the experts can touch in a day. A manufacturer's quoting desk, an accountancy's year-end work, a contractor's tendering — the spine doesn't care what sector you're in. It cares where your knowledge lives.
Could this work in your firm?
The honest answer comes out of a half-day workshop. Tell me what the business does and where the bottleneck is.