AI for Law Firms: The Dana Avocats Case Study

AI for law firms: how Dana Avocats automates recurring answers and recovers billable time

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In a law firm, time is the most valuable resource, and the easiest to lose. Between questions from clients, partners and members of the public, the inbox absorbs hours every week that will never be billed. Dana Avocats decided to tackle the problem at its root by deploying, with Qolaig, an AI assistant trained on its own knowledge base. Here is a look at a project that shows how artificial intelligence can serve the law without ever compromising the quality of the client relationship.

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Dana Avocats at a glance

Dana Avocats is a law firm of 2 to 10 people that supports its clients with rigour and responsiveness. Convinced that technology should serve the law and not the other way around, the firm turned AI into a performance lever, on one condition: every answer must remain true to its standards and positioning.

Sector: legal
Size: 2 to 10 employees
Solutions deployed: RAG conversational assistant and email assistant integrated into Outlook

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The problem: an inbox that had become a productivity sink

At Dana Avocats, the same questions came back week after week. Taken one by one, they seemed harmless. Added up, they consumed a considerable amount of time the firm would rather have spent on its complex cases.

The consequences were very concrete:

• a growing mental load for the team
• billable time eaten away by low-value, repetitive tasks
• client responsiveness that depended entirely on the availability of staff

Many professional services firms share this observation. Recurring requests rank high in our list of the 15 AI agents to deploy first in your company, because their ROI is both fast and measurable.

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The challenges identified upfront

Before writing a single line of code, four requirements were set:

• free up time spent on low-value recurring questions
• maintain flawless answer quality, aligned with the firm’s positioning
• integrate with existing tools without disrupting work habits
• leverage the internal knowledge base to train the solution

The third point is often the one that sinks AI projects in small organisations: one more tool to open is a tool that ends up abandoned.

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The method: start from processes, not technology

Like most of our engagements, the project began with a Qolaig Workshop. This discovery phase maps pain points, prioritises use cases by impact and estimates return on investment before any development starts. It is the same approach we applied, on a very different scale, to rethink Jacky Perrenot’s transport operations: AI is only relevant when it fits into a redesigned business process.

For Dana Avocats, the diagnosis highlighted two priority entry points for recurring questions: the firm’s platform and the Outlook inbox.

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Solution 1: a RAG conversational assistant integrated into the firm’s platform

The first tool is a chat assistant that automatically answers frequently asked questions submitted through the firm’s website or platform.

It relies on a RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) architecture: rather than answering from generic knowledge, the assistant retrieves information from Dana Avocats’ own question-and-answer base, then builds its response from these validated sources. In practice, it speaks like the firm, not like a generic chatbot.

Clients get an immediate, accurate answer consistent with the firm’s line, at any time of day, without involving a single team member. To understand in more detail how this type of tool works and the classic mistakes to avoid, read our guide Enterprise chatbots: how they work.

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Solution 2: reply drafts generated directly in Outlook

The second tool handles incoming emails. It works with a single gesture: the team drags the email into a dedicated Outlook folder called “Automatic reply draft”, and the assistant instantly generates a reply draft, ready to be reviewed and sent.

No extra tool to open, no context switching. The lawyer stays in control of every message: AI prepares, the human validates. This is exactly the copilot approach we describe in our article AI copilots in the enterprise: definition and use cases. In a profession where professional liability is at stake in every exchange, this design choice is essential.

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The results

• 100% of recurring questions handled without involving the team
• instant answers on the chat, versus several hours of waiting before
• a single gesture to generate a complete email draft in Outlook
• zero overhaul of existing tools or work habits

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Return on investment: billable time recovered

Every recurring question handled manually meant qualified time taken away from high-value cases. By automating these answers, Dana Avocats recovers billable time, reduces its team’s mental load and keeps client responsiveness constant, without depending on human availability.

Above all, the firm’s knowledge, once structured, becomes an asset that works around the clock. Each newly validated question and answer enriches the base and improves the assistant’s quality over time.

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Why this case applies to every firm and regulated profession

The model deployed at Dana Avocats applies to any organisation receiving a high volume of similar requests: accounting firms, notary offices, intellectual property firms, wealth managers. Three conditions are enough to get started:

• a base of standard answers, even partial, to structure
• identified entry channels (website, email, client platform)
• a commitment to keeping a human in the loop for sensitive answers

To go further on the differences between assistants, agents and automation, our complete guide to agentic automation and our article AI agent, chatbot, robot: the guide to stop mixing them up lay the groundwork.

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FAQ: AI in a law firm

Can AI answer instead of a lawyer?
No, and that is not the goal. The assistant handles recurring questions based on answers validated by the firm. For emails, it generates drafts that the lawyer reviews before sending. Decisions and responsibility remain human.

What is a RAG assistant?
A RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) assistant searches a company’s own document base before formulating its answer. This limits approximations and ensures responses are consistent with the firm’s position.

Do you need to change tools to integrate AI?
No. At Dana Avocats, the email assistant runs directly in Outlook, from a simple folder. We always start from existing tools (email, CRM, internal platform) so adoption is immediate.

Is the firm’s data protected?
Yes. Our architectures are designed around each client’s security, confidentiality and governance requirements, a non-negotiable point for professions bound by professional secrecy.

How do you start an AI project in a small firm?
With a workshop to identify priority use cases, estimate ROI and define a clear roadmap before any development begins.

Want to free up your team’s time?

Like Dana Avocats, identify the repetitive tasks weighing on your business and estimate the return on investment of an AI assistant tailored to your tools. Let’s talk about your AI project: audit and ROI estimate in 30 minutes.