Can AI help us cover a fee earner's caseload when they are off sick?

Yes, for the part of absence cover that is reading. An AI assistant can help whoever picks up the caseload work out what each file is about, what has happened recently and what is outstanding, far faster than reading every file cover to cover. The decisions about what is urgent, who to call and what to do next are still the firm's, and they are the harder half of the job.

What absence cover actually involves

When a fee earner is unexpectedly off, the firm is usually facing three separate problems at once.

The first is triage: of thirty or eighty open files, which ones need something doing this week, and which can sit. The second is comprehension: the person covering has to understand enough of each urgent file to act safely. The third is communication: clients, the other side and the court need to know who is dealing, and need sensible answers when they ring.

AI is genuinely useful for the second of those. It is partly useful for the first, because it can tell you what a file says about deadlines and outstanding actions. It does almost nothing for the third, which depends on a human being taking responsibility.

Triage before you read anything

Resist the urge to start at the top of the list and read. A better order is:

1. Pull the key dates from the case management system first. Hearings, limitation, court directions, exchange dates, completion dates, statutory deadlines. The diary system, not the AI tool, is the authority on these.
2. Identify files where something is due in the next two weeks. Those get attention now.
3. For each of those, get a short briefing on the file before you open the correspondence.
4. Everything else gets a holding review later in the week.

The briefing in step three is where an AI assistant earns its place. A cover fee earner can ask a file-specific tool what the matter concerns, who the parties are, what the last substantive step was, what the client has been told and what the file says is outstanding. Done properly, each answer points at the page it came from, so the fee earner can check anything that matters before relying on it.

Getting across an unfamiliar file quickly

The useful questions on a cover file tend to be narrow and factual:

• What has the client been told about timescales and costs?
• What was promised in the last letter out, and has it been done?
• Are there undertakings on this file?
• What does the file say about the next step, and by when?
• What is still missing: signed documents, funds on account, medical evidence, replies from the other side?

Those are all questions the papers either answer or do not. A tool that reads the matter's own documents and names the page each answer came from lets the cover fee earner verify in seconds rather than hunting. A tool that says "the papers do not say" when they do not is more useful than one that produces a plausible paragraph from nowhere, because on an unfamiliar file you have no instinct for when an answer is wrong.

Two cautions. First, a file briefing is a starting point, not a handover note from the absent fee earner. Things that were in someone's head and never written down will not appear. Second, treat anything date-critical as a prompt to check the primary source: the order, the court email, the contract.

Access, confidentiality and supervision

Absence creates its own compliance problems, and they do not disappear because the reading is faster.

Someone has to grant the cover fee earner access to the files, deliberately and on the record. A tool where people see only the matters they are on is an advantage here, because the access decision is visible and reversible when the absent colleague returns. Blanket access for whoever happens to be senior is not the answer.

Supervision also needs thought. A paralegal covering a solicitor's files with AI assistance is not thereby qualified to make decisions on them. Decide at the outset who is signing off what, and make sure the cover fee earner knows which decisions to escalate rather than take. The same standard applies to work produced with AI as to any other work: it is reviewed and approved by someone competent to do so.

Tell clients who is dealing with their matter during the absence. That is ordinary good practice and nothing to do with AI.

Plan for it before it happens

The firms that cope with sudden absence well are the ones where files are in a decent state already: notes on the file rather than in the inbox, dates in the diary rather than in someone's memory, attendance notes written up the same week.

AI makes a reasonably kept file quick to absorb. It cannot reconstruct a conversation nobody recorded. If an absence has just exposed gaps on a caseload, that is worth addressing when the fee earner is back, not just patching.

Where Alesis fits

Alesis is an AI assistant for UK law firms, used through the browser, with one conversation for a matter. It answers questions about a matter from the matter's own papers and names the page each answer came from, and where the papers do not say, it says so. Inside a firm, people see only the matters they are on, and seniority alone grants no view, so cover access is something the firm grants deliberately. Alesis assists qualified professionals and does not replace them, and it does not provide legal advice.