Before you decide

Here is exactly what happens.

This page is for people who want to understand the full process before booking. Walk through every step, from the 30-minute consultation to your first quarterly review. No surprises.

01 / The 30-Minute Consultation

A structured interview. Not a sales call.

The consultation is five phases, 30 minutes total. We do most of the homework before the call. You walk us through your operation. We listen for where time is bleeding. There is no pitch and no pressure on the call itself.

Phase 01
The Lay of the Land
5 minutes

We establish operational context fast. Most of the research happens before the call, so we are not asking you to explain your business from scratch. We ask only what we cannot infer. You will feel that we did our homework.

  • "Walk me through what your business actually does on a Tuesday."
  • "Who is on the team, and what does each person mostly own?"
  • "Where does the work come in from? Referrals, inbound, repeat business?"
Output: Operational baseline established  ·  Credibility built early
Phase 02
The Time Audit
10 minutes

Where does time actually go? We are hunting for the routine, repetitive work that makes senior people feel like they are not doing the job they were hired for. Tactical detail beats abstract complaints here. Specifics are more valuable than summaries.

  • "Of the last 10 hours you personally worked, how much was actually doing what you are best at?"
  • "If I shadowed your most senior person for a day, what would I see them do that should not require their attention?"
  • "What is the work everyone hates and nobody quite owns?"
  • "What is a customer touchpoint that consistently gets dropped when you are slammed?"
Output: Specific operational pain points identified in your own words
Phase 03
The Cost of Inaction
15 minutes

The most important phase. We help you quantify what your current state actually costs, in revenue and in retention and in mental load and in opportunity. By the end of this phase, you are building the case for change in your own words. We do not need to persuade you. The numbers do it.

  • "When that intake form sits unanswered for two days, what happens to the lead?"
  • "You said you do not follow up with past clients. What would one re-engaged client be worth to you?"
  • "How does the billing-chase situation affect your relationship with those clients?"
  • "If your senior people had 10 more hours a week, what is the highest-leverage thing they would do with them?"
  • "What is growing slower than it should because of this?"
Output: Quantified cost of current operational gaps  ·  Business case for change formed in your language
Phase 04
The Vision of Relief
10 minutes

We let you articulate the value of fixing this in your own language. The Operations Audit Memo we send in 48 hours will quote your exact words back to you. This is not a sales technique. It is how we make sure the recommendations map directly to what actually matters to you.

  • "If every new lead got a thoughtful response within 15 minutes, how would your week change?"
  • "What would it feel like to walk into Monday and know intake, scheduling, and follow-up were already handled?"
  • "If we gave you back 12 hours of partner time a week, what is the highest-leverage thing you would do with them?"
  • "What is the part of your business you would grow if you were not trapped in operations?"
Output: Specific relief scenarios captured  ·  Recommendation brief ready to draft
Phase 05
Constraints and Reality Check
5 minutes

We surface real constraints before recommending anything. Who else needs to weigh in? What systems are non-negotiable? What is the ceiling on monthly spend? What is the actual timeline pressure? Then we close the call. We do not pitch agents on the call. Recommendations come in writing 48 hours later.

  • "Who else on your team would need to be involved in a decision like this?"
  • "Are there systems you are locked into that I should know about?"
  • "What is a rough ceiling on what you would spend per month on this kind of help?"
Output: Realistic scope defined  ·  Operations Audit Memo scheduled for delivery
02 / What You Receive Within 48 Hours

A written document. Not a pitch deck.

Within 48 hours of the consultation, you receive an Operations Audit Memo. Two to three pages. It names the most expensive operational leaks in your firm, in your words and with your numbers, and recommends specific agents tuned to your reality. The memo is valuable whether you hire or not.

Operations Audit Memo  ·  Confidential Delivered within 48 hours of consultation
AI Work Staff
Operations Audit Memo
Prepared for
Hartwell & Reed LLP
Consultation date
November 14, 2026
Delivered
November 16, 2026

What we heard

Hartwell & Reed is a 10-attorney boutique firm with strong commercial real estate practice and growing demand. The firm bills approximately $3.2M annually but partners describe spending 30 to 40 percent of their week on work that should not reach their desk. Inbound lead response is inconsistent. Monthly billing takes a Sunday afternoon from the managing partner. No regular client re-engagement program exists despite a database of 400+ past contacts. The managing partner described the current state as "responsive, not proactive."

The three most expensive operational leaks

Leak 01  ·  Highest cost
Inbound lead response gap
New inquiries currently receive a response within 24 to 48 hours when the managing partner is available. Based on CRE industry data, 57% of commercial clients choose the first firm to respond substantively. At the firm's average new client value of $18,000, a response gap of 24 hours likely costs the firm 2 to 4 clients per year in lost conversions.
Estimated annual cost: $36,000 to $72,000 in lost revenue
Leak 02  ·  Partner time
Billing cycle consuming partner bandwidth
The managing partner described spending 4 to 5 hours per week on billing-related tasks: invoice review, reminder emails, and payment chasing. At a billing rate of $350/hour, this represents $72,800 per year in partner time applied to administrative work.
Estimated annual cost: $72,800 in misallocated partner time
Leak 03  ·  Latent revenue
No systematic past-client re-engagement
The firm has 400+ past clients with no structured outreach program. Using industry averages for professional services re-engagement (12% response rate, 30% conversion to a new matter), a single annual re-engagement campaign to past clients could produce 14 to 16 new matters.
Estimated annual opportunity: $250,000 to $290,000 in incremental billings

Recommended hires

These recommendations map directly to the pain points you described. They are in order of highest expected impact.

Junior · $299/mo
Sandy
Intake Coordinator
Addresses Leak 01 directly. Sandy handles every new lead within 15 minutes, qualifies in your firm's voice, sends intake forms, and books discovery calls. The response gap closes on day one.
$299/mo + $1,500 hiring fee
Mid · $599/mo
Bob
Billing & Collections
Addresses Leak 02. Bob runs the weekly invoice cycle, sends calibrated reminders, reconciles payments, and surfaces overdue accounts. The managing partner's 4-hour billing week compresses to a 30-minute review.
$599/mo + $1,500 hiring fee
This memo summarizes our interpretation of the consultation. All financial estimates are based on industry benchmarks and figures you provided. Before acting on any estimate, verify against your own data. No legal or accounting advice is offered herein.
03 / When You're Ready to Hire

Offer letters, not contracts.

When you decide to hire, you receive offer letters for each recommended agent. Not a contract. Not a platform agreement buried in 40 pages. A single-page offer letter per agent with the salary, the hiring fee, the onboarding scope, and the performance guarantee. You sign only what you want.

The one-time hiring fee per agent ($1,500) covers the consultative intake work (which you already received for free), custom system prompt configuration, integration setup, voice and style training on your samples, and the first 30 days of guided onboarding.

There is no platform lock-in. No long-term commitment. If an agent does not work out, you give 30 days notice, the same way you would with a human hire. Most customers find this is actually less commitment than a software subscription, because you are paying for outcomes, not access.

After you sign, the 14-day onboarding begins. Your first agent is handling real work unsupervised by day 14.

04 / 14-Day Onboarding

From signed offer letter to unsupervised work.

The 14-day onboarding is structured to minimize risk. Your agent goes unsupervised only after you have seen and approved their work enough to trust it. Most customers reach that point by day 10 or 11.

Days 1 to 3
Access and voice calibration
Your agent connects to the tools you already use: email, calendar, CRM, billing software. You share samples of your firm's communication style (3 to 5 existing emails, documents, or notes).
What you do: provide access credentials and voice samples.
What we do: configure the agent's system, connect integrations, train on your style.
No agent output yet  ·  Setup only
Days 4 to 7
Shadow mode
Your agent drafts every reply, document, or action for your review before anything goes out or happens. You correct tone, routing decisions, and format. Each correction trains the agent for the next round.
What you do: review and approve or revise each draft. Takes 5 to 15 minutes per day.
What we do: incorporate each correction into the agent's calibration.
Everything reviewed before it leaves your control
Days 8 to 11
Supervised live
Your agent works directly. You review their outputs at the end of each day via a short summary, rather than before each action. Edge cases still flag for immediate human review.
What you do: review the end-of-day digest and flag anything that missed the mark.
What we do: quality-sample the full output stream and feed corrections back.
Outputs go out directly  ·  Daily review
Day 14
Unsupervised
Your agent runs independently. Quality sampling continues. You receive a weekly summary instead of a daily one. The 30-day check-in is already on the calendar.
What you do: review the weekly summary and note anything to adjust at the 30-day check-in.
What we do: monitor output quality, surface anomalies, prep the 30-day review.
Agent working independently
05 / After You Hire

The ongoing rhythm.

Hiring an agent is not a set-it-and-forget-it event. There is a structured review cadence that keeps the agent calibrated, tracks performance, and surfaces expansion opportunities.

Day 30  ·  30-Minute Call

First Check-In

One month in. Tune voice, fix failure modes, confirm the agent is handling what was promised. Adjust any routing rules or escalation thresholds that are not working.

  • Voice and tone review
  • Edge case resolution
  • Routing rule adjustments
  • First ROI snapshot
Day 90  ·  45-Minute Review

90-Day Performance Review

The 90-day mark is the guarantee window close. We present a performance dashboard showing what the agent handled, ROI measured against the Operations Audit Memo projections, and a recommendation on whether to expand the team.

  • Performance dashboard walkthrough
  • ROI measurement vs. OAM projections
  • Proposal for next hire (if warranted)
  • Guarantee confirmation or remediation
Quarterly  ·  30-Minute Review

Quarterly Review

Every quarter after the 90-day review. Performance stays current. You see trends, catch any drift in agent quality, and decide whether the team needs to grow or shift.

  • Quarterly performance report
  • Agent quality audit (sample review)
  • Team expansion conversation
  • Rate schedule confirmation
Continuous  ·  Automated

Always-On Monitoring

Between reviews, quality sampling runs continuously. If an agent's tone drifts, a routing pattern breaks, or an anomaly appears in output, the system surfaces it before it becomes a customer issue.

  • Output quality sampling (daily)
  • Tone drift detection
  • Anomaly flagging to HR Partner
  • Weekly summary digest to you
06 / The Guarantee

If the agent does not meet standard, we fix it.

The performance guarantee covers the first 90 days of every hire. No fine print. No performance scoring that is impossible to meet. If an agent is not doing what the Operations Audit Memo said they would do, we make it right.

90-day performance guarantee.

If your agent does not meet the performance standards defined during onboarding within the first 90 days, you have two options. We replace the agent at no additional cost, or we refund the hiring fee in full. Your choice.

  • 01Performance standards are written into your offer letter during onboarding. No vague commitments.
  • 02If the agent misses standard, you choose: replacement at no cost, or full hiring fee refund.
  • 03The 90-day guarantee window is confirmed at the 90-day review. You know exactly where you stand.
  • 04Cancellation requires 30 days notice at any time, like a real employment relationship.
  • 05The guarantee rarely gets invoked because the consultative intake filters for fit before the hire.

Now you know what happens.

The 30-minute consultation is free. The Operations Audit Memo arrives within 48 hours, regardless of whether you hire. The offer letter comes only if you want it. Book when you are ready.

Free  ·  30 minutes  ·  Written memo within 48 hours  ·  No commitment to hire