What do people mean by AI readiness?
The phrase covers a lot. Sometimes it means the state of a firm's data and IT. Sometimes it means staff skills and attitudes. Sometimes it means governance: whether there is a policy, who approves use, how client confidentiality is protected. A typical paid readiness audit scores a firm across all of these and ends with a roadmap of what to do next.
For a firm of 20 to 200 people, most of that scoring confirms what the partners already suspect. The data is spread across systems. Some staff are keen, some wary. The policy is thin. None of these facts, on their own, stops a firm from rebuilding a single process.
What actually decides whether a firm is ready?
At the level of one process, readiness is concrete and quick to judge:
- There is a job that repeats. Weekly or monthly, not once a year.
- It has a shape. Someone experienced could describe the steps and what good looks like, even if it has never been written down.
- The inputs already exist. Notes, records, templates, past examples. They can be messy.
- Someone owns it. A person with authority to change how the job is done, and time to make decisions in the first week.
- Someone can review the output. A qualified person who will sign off anything that goes to a client.
If those five hold for one process, the firm is ready for that process. The AI readiness checklist turns these into questions you can answer in a few minutes.
What does Aldbry's audit tell you?
The audit is ten questions and takes about three minutes. It estimates the unbillable hours your fee earners lose each week, what those hours cost a year at your own charge-out rate, and the single process to tackle first. Every assumption is shown on the result, so it is a transparent estimate rather than a verdict.
It is not a paid engagement, a report or a roadmap, and it does not score your firm's maturity. It answers the practical questions: how much time is going, what that is worth, and where to start. If you would rather work the cost out by hand, it is the weekly hours lost, multiplied by the number of fee earners, by the charge-out rate and by 46 working weeks. The unbillable hours calculator does that sum.
Why isn't a roadmap the missing piece?
Firms that already own a roadmap tend to find the same thing: the first item on it still needs someone to do it. The roadmap was never what held them back. Time was. A partner who cannot find an afternoon to rebuild a reporting process will not find it because a document says they should.
That is why the offer is a working process rather than a plan for one. The discovery that a readiness audit would do, sitting with the people who run the job and working out where the hours go, is the first week of the 30 day rebuild. It happens on the process you are actually going to change, and it leads straight into building.
What about governance and data protection?
These matter, and they are settled for the specific process being rebuilt rather than in the abstract. Before any client information is used, we agree how it will be handled under UK GDPR and your own confidentiality terms, and we work under whatever confidentiality agreement you use with any other supplier. If your firm is regulated by a body such as the SRA, ICAEW or the FCA, the review and sign-off steps are designed around your existing obligations. For wider policy, see writing an AI policy.
What if the audit says we are not ready?
It will not say that in those words. It will show where your hours are going. If none of your processes repeat enough, or the time lost is small, the honest answer is that a rebuild may not be worth it yet, and the result will make that visible. Doing nothing or acting now helps weigh that choice.