Who owns AI in your firm?

Is there a person who keeps an eye on AI in your firm? Perhaps, they read the terms before the firm signs up to a tool, they notice when two people are paying for the same subscription, and they think about where client information ends up. That's a real contribution to a firm, and it happens quietly, around a full workload.

What we tend to see is that the job arrived without much ceremony. AI came up in a partners' meeting, the question was who would have a look at it, and the person with the most interest put their hand up.

Let's take a look at Kate, a practice manager who volunteered. Months later, the questions keep coming to her. Is this new tool alright to use? Can a client document go into it? What is the firm doing about AI? So who owns AI in your firm?

1What the job involves

For Kate, owning it means a steady run of small calls. Last month a lawyer asked whether they could put a client file note into ChatGPT to get a summary, and Kate told them to keep the client's name out of it. The practice management system offered a new AI feature, and Kate decided whether to switch it on. Two people were claiming the same tool on expenses, and Kate asked one of them to cancel. A new starter asked what the firm's position on AI was, and heard Kate's best understanding of it.

The job tends to land with the practice manager because they see across the whole firm. Intake, templates, subscriptions, new starters and software renewals all pass across the same desk, so when AI turns up in all of them at once, the questions go there too. Put together, those small calls are the firm's AI policy, written by one person who reports to the partners.

2Authority, partners and clients

Kate can recommend a tool, and approving the spend sits with those same partners. She can write the firm's position down. A document from one person, without the partners behind it, holds for as long as people choose to follow it. Mostly they do. When a partner decides otherwise, the whole office learns the position was Kate's all along.

Leaders well beyond law and accounting are working through the same question. Microsoft's 2024 Work Trend Index, a survey of 31,000 people in 31 countries, found 60% of leaders worry their organisation's leadership lacks a plan and vision for AI. Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ), drawing on Ipsos research for Chartered Accountants Worldwide, found 45% of senior decision makers do not feel confident using AI, and 67% expect their professional body to set the pace. Inside a single firm, the partners set that pace, and staff take their cue from what the partners do with AI, including whether to keep using their own tools on their own accounts.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has guidance on commercially available AI products that recommends organisations set policies and procedures for how they use AI, and keep their privacy policies and notifications up to date with clear information about it. It also recommends that organisations keep personal information out of publicly available generative AI tools.

Clients have started asking as well. Clio's 2026 Legal Insights Report, as reported by Team Clio for the Australasian Legal Practice Management Association (ALPMA), found 70% of Australian legal professionals say clients are asking how AI is being used in their matters. The same report found 84% of firms say they disclose AI use to clients. When a client asks, the person on the phone needs an answer the firm has agreed, and so does Kate.

3A home for AI in the firm

When a firm goes looking for that agreed answer, the first move is often a title. Kate becomes the AI lead, or a small working group is set up to write a policy.

The questions keep arriving on Kate's desk, and each answer rests on her. A working group's policy goes back to the partners for the same decisions.

Taking it to the partners

Kate can prepare most of this before it reaches the partners.

1. List the AI questions that have come to Kate over the last few months, and the tools they were about. A check-in on the tools already in use fills in the rest.

2. Turn them into six decisions: which tools the firm approves, what can go into them, who checks the output, what the firm pays for centrally, what a new starter hears in their first week, and who answers a client who asks about AI.

3. Write a recommended answer next to each one.

4. Take the six to a partners' meeting, and ask the partners to name the partner accountable for AI and agree what Kate can decide on her own.

5. Turn the answers into a draft AI use policy for the partners to finalise, then share it with the whole firm.

Partners may agree with most of it quickly, and spend their time on the one or two that needed a partner in the first place.

Once the answers are written down where the whole firm can see them, Kate has fewer decisions to make from scratch. A lawyer with an idea for using AI on a matter checks the list and gets started. A new starter works to the same answers as a colleague who has been at the firm for nine years.

When a new tool appears, or the practice management system adds another AI feature, the question comes to Kate, and she has the partners' decisions to work from and the authority to apply them. A client who asks how the firm uses AI gets the same answer from the receptionist as from the senior partner, because the whole firm is working from the same decisions.

4Where we come in

Moving from the left-hand column to the right starts with knowing where AI sits in your firm today. Our investigation looks at how AI is used across the firm, who is holding it, and which decisions the partners want to make first. It includes a leadership session with your partners and a draft AI use policy for them to finalise. It also measures how long the firm's work takes today, so you start from a baseline of your own. The findings belong to your firm whether or not we go any further together.

If you would like to talk it through, reach out to our team. The first conversation works out whether your firm is the right fit for the AI Uplift Program, and whether we are the right people to help.

Giving AI a home in the firm