Can AI help us keep clients updated on long-running matters?

Yes. On a matter that has run for months, the hard part of a client update is usually not writing it: it is working out what has actually happened since you last wrote, and finding it in a file that has grown. An AI assistant that reads the matter papers can pull that together and draft a plain status note. The fee earner still decides what matters, what to leave out and what to say about next steps, and signs it off.

Why updates slip on long matters

Complaints to firms, and on to the Legal Ombudsman, are often less about the outcome than about silence. Clients who do not hear anything assume nothing is happening. The problem is rarely indifference. It is that an update on a two year old file takes real time: reading back through correspondence, checking what was promised, remembering what the client already knows.

So updates get postponed to the week when there is room, and that week does not come. The matters that most need regular contact, the slow ones with long gaps between events, are exactly the ones where the cost of reconstructing the position is highest.

That cost is the part AI can reduce. It cannot decide whether a client should be told now or after the next hearing. It can tell you, quickly and with references, what is on the file since February.

What AI can do for an update

Useful tasks, in roughly the order you would use them:

• Reconstruct the period. Ask what has happened on the matter since a given date, and get a list of events with the document each came from. This is the step that usually takes the longest by hand.
• Find what was promised. Ask what the firm told the client it would do, and whether the papers show it done. Unfulfilled promises are the most common source of friction.
• Flag the open points. What are we waiting on, from whom, and since when.
• Draft the note. A short letter or email in the firm's usual shape: where we are, what has happened, what happens next, what we need from you.
• Check against the last update. Compare the draft to the previous letter so you are not repeating yourself or contradicting what the client was told.

What it cannot do is judge tone. A client who is anxious about cost, or who has just had a bereavement, or who is about to make a decision under pressure, needs a letter written by someone who knows them. The draft is a starting point, not a substitute for that judgement.

A workable routine

Firms that keep on top of updates tend to batch them rather than rely on memory.

1. Pick a fixed point: the first working day of the month, or a review date in the file management system.
2. List the matters that have had no outbound client contact since the last round. Your practice management system should be able to tell you this.
3. For each one, ask the assistant for the position since the last update, with sources.
4. Read that. Decide whether an update is needed, and what it should say. Some matters genuinely warrant a two line email.
5. Have a draft prepared, edit it, send it from your own system.
6. Record the update on the file as you normally would.

The discipline is in steps two and four, which are human. Steps three and five are where time is saved, and the saving is enough to make the routine survive a busy month.

Three things to watch

Do not let the draft decide the content. A summary of what is on the file is not the same as what the client needs to know. There will be things on the file you should not repeat verbatim: internal notes, counsel's frank views, your own risk assessment. Read the draft as an editor, not a proofreader.

Check the gaps are real gaps. If the assistant says the papers do not show a step being taken, that may mean it was never done, or it may mean the attendance note was never written up, or that a document sits in an email folder rather than on the file. Treat a gap as a prompt to look, not as a finding.

Keep the costs position accurate. Clients read updates for clues about cost. If you mention fees, incurred time or likely future spend, that figure must come from your billing records and your own estimate, checked by you. Do not let a narrative drafted from correspondence imply a number you have not verified.

Where Alesis fits

Alesis answers questions about a matter from the matter's own papers and names the page each answer came from; where the papers do not say, it says so rather than guessing. It prepares drafts for a qualified person to review and sign off, and it does not file, serve or email anything. Each matter has one conversation, so the picture builds as the file does, and people inside the firm see only the matters they are on. It assists qualified professionals and does not replace them, and it does not provide legal advice.