Law firms, accountants, consultancies, architects, surveyors. The fundamentals are the same wherever you work. Time is your inventory. Relationships are your competitive advantage. And both leak in ways that are entirely preventable.
A bespoke AI platform tracks utilisation in real time, manages your client relationships, accelerates your proposals and connects your financial position to the hours being worked. All on private infrastructure you own.
A fee earner sitting at 60% utilisation when the target is 75% is costing you money every single day. Most professional services firms track utilisation monthly in arrears. By then the hours are gone. Your platform tracks billable time in real time. Cortex flags underutilisation before it becomes a month-end conversation and identifies where the non-billable time is going.
WIP that sits uninvoiced is cash you have earned but not collected. It also ages into write-offs that damage both margin and morale. Your platform tracks every piece of WIP, flags invoicing delays and gives Cortex the context to tell you why each one has stalled. Scope dispute, client approval pending, fee earner not billing promptly. The WIP conversation moves from audit to weekly.
The relationship history, the personal dynamics, the things that have never been in an email. When a partner leaves, clients leave with them. Unless that knowledge lives in the platform, not just in their contacts list. Every client, every matter, every conversation, every relationship nuance in one place. Cortex tells you which relationships need covering and what the next action should be.
Your best work is buried in old proposals, past matter files and email threads. Every new pitch starts from scratch because finding the relevant precedent takes longer than writing new content. Cortex knows every proposal you have ever written, every case you have ever run, every outcome you have ever delivered. It drafts the relevant sections in your voice and your methodology. You review and refine.
Clients do not usually announce they are leaving. They go quiet. They take longer to respond. They start asking for smaller pieces of work. By the time you notice the revenue gap the relationship has already moved to a competitor. Your platform tracks engagement patterns across every client. Cortex flags the early warning signs and recommends the intervention before the client makes the decision.
Timesheets recorded but not billed. Disbursements absorbed rather than charged. Scope creep handled without a variation. Every one of these is margin leakage that compounds across every matter. Your platform tracks the gap between time recorded and time billed, flags scope creep as it happens and gives Cortex the data to identify which clients, which fee earners and which types of matter have the worst leakage.
Utilisation by fee earner, by team and by practice area tracked in real time. Non-billable time categorised and analysed. WIP flagged before it ages. Cortex tells you at the start of the week which fee earners are behind target and what interventions have worked historically. Your monthly utilisation review becomes a daily conversation.
Matter progress, WIP age, billing status and client approval stages all in one view. Cortex flags anything that has been sitting uninvoiced for more than your threshold and provides the context for why. Scope creep identified as it happens. Variation requests raised automatically. Your write-off rate drops because the conversations happen before the invoice, not after.
A complete client record covering every matter, every conversation, every relationship dynamic and every piece of work delivered. Cortex tracks engagement patterns and flags at-risk clients before they disengage. Partner knowledge stored in the platform, not in their heads. When a fee earner moves on the relationship stays.
Cortex knows every proposal you have written, every case you have run, every outcome you have delivered and every methodology you use. It drafts new proposals from your precedent library and your matter archive. Your BD team stops reinventing and starts refining. Pitches go out faster and win more often.
Lock-up, WIP, debtors and cash position tracked in real time. Connected directly to your accounting system. Billing targets tracked daily. Cortex flags aged debtors before they become bad debts and identifies the partners whose clients pay slowest. Your finance director spends less time chasing and more time advising.
A fully built website managed from inside your platform. Thought leadership published from your matter insights. Case studies drafted by Cortex from anonymised matter outcomes. Team profiles always current. SEO and GEO built in so you show up when potential clients search for expertise in your practice areas. No agency. No quarterly retainer.
Cortex knows your utilisation position, your WIP, your client relationships and your matter history. Ask it which fee earners are below target, which clients are going quiet or which previous matter is the best precedent for a new pitch.
"It answers like a managing partner who has read every file, attended every client meeting and has perfect recall of every billing conversation."
Every director takes two minutes on the last Friday of the month. The brain collates their updates, cross-references them against everything it knows about the business, and produces the board pack. Then it adds its own report: an independent analysis no director wrote, with no political considerations, that flags what the board needs to act on before the meeting starts.
Q3 revenue ahead of target. Two partner lateral hires completing next month. One major client relationship at risk following departure of lead partner. New practice area launch on track for January.
SUBMITTED · FRIDAY 16:38Lock-up at 68 days versus 55 day target. Three significant aged debtors requiring escalation. Billing for September slightly behind due to two partner absences. Cash position comfortable.
SUBMITTED · FRIDAY 16:42Pipeline at £2.1M with three major pitches in progress. Win rate this quarter 44% versus 38% last year. Two referral relationships need nurturing. No activity in 90 days. Website enquiries up 28%.
SUBMITTED · FRIDAY 16:46Utilisation averaging 71% against 75% target. Three fee earners consistently below target for six weeks. IT migration on track. Remote working policy review required.
SUBMITTED · FRIDAY 16:50The following analysis was prepared by Cortex from the director updates above, combined with live platform data. It is independent of any director's submission and has been prepared without prior sight of the agenda.
Lock-up at 68 days is 13 days above target and represents approximately £340,000 of additional cash tied up versus target. The concentration is in three clients who collectively account for 61% of the excess. Two of these have a pattern of late approval that has been tolerated rather than managed. The third has a billing dispute that has been sitting unresolved for 47 days. Each of these needs a specific action this week.
The departure of the lead partner on the Whitmore Group account represents a material revenue risk. Whitmore generate approximately £180,000 per year and the relationship is almost entirely personal to the departed partner. There has been one courtesy call from the managing partner but no structured transition plan. Based on the matter history, an immediate senior engagement followed by a relationship review meeting within two weeks gives the best chance of retention.
Average utilisation of 71% is 4 points below target and has been drifting for three consecutive months. The gap is not evenly distributed. Six fee earners are performing above 78% while four are consistently below 65%. This is a workflow allocation issue as much as a performance one. Cortex can model a reallocation of matter assignments that would bring average utilisation to 74% without additional headcount.
The pipeline is healthy and win rate improvement is meaningful. The three major pitches in progress represent £840,000 of potential annual fees. Based on the client profiles and our historical win rate in similar pitches, probability-weighted value is approximately £370,000. The two dormant referral relationships are worth prioritising. Historically referral instructions have a 60% shorter sales cycle than cold pipeline.
Cortex has no politics, no relationships to protect and no agenda. It tells the board what the data says, not what anyone wanted it to say.
It has read every director's update and cross-referenced it against live platform data before it writes a word. No human could do that in 40 seconds.
Every claim references its source. The board can interrogate any finding and trace it back to the underlying data, transaction or record.
Runs under the Sheriff: cites sources, flags uncertainty, never invents figures and always distinguishes between what the data shows and what it recommends.
A 30 minute call. No deck, no pressure, no junior sales rep. You talk, we listen, and you leave with a straight answer on whether a brain makes sense for your business.