AI Discovery, applied to legal practice.

Established referral pipelines remain valuable and we do not propose to replace them. Two considerations weigh on the engagement decision. First, AI Discovery affects how prospective clients evaluate the firm even when the introduction is referral-based; sixty-eight percent of legal buyers, on the most recent industry survey, search for and read about the firm online before agreeing to the introductory meeting. The firm's discovery position shapes that pre-meeting reading. Second, partner succession typically requires expansion of pipeline beyond the current partners' personal networks; AI Discovery is, on Founding Quarter data, the most leverage-able mechanism by which next-generation partners can build practice independent of inheritance.

We offer no ROI guarantee. The Standards of Professional Conduct prohibit fee structures contingent on Index movement, and we apply that rule to performance guarantees regardless of contractual form. What we offer is documented methodology, quarterly Index reporting, and the discipline of an engagement structured to produce measurable signal movement. Among engaged Foundation legal clients to date, the median Day-180 movement is sixty-eight points on the headline score. Median is not promise; we report the distribution rather than the headline number.

Two answers. First, the Practice Group maintains a published conflicts register and refuses engagements that would breach an existing client's reasonable conflict expectation. We do not serve directly conflicted competitors in the same regional market simultaneously. Second, our position on a specific potential conflict is communicated in writing before the proposal is issued. If we cannot serve the firm because of an existing engagement, we say so and refer where we can. Conflicts are managed at the regional + practice-area intersection; two firms with different practice specialisms in the same city are typically not in conflict.

Many firms can. Several considerations weigh on the in-house decision: the methodology is published but its application is non-trivial; the Citation Engine work depends on editorial relationships at Law360, ALM, and the academic legal press that take years to build; the Index access required for sustained measurement is a paid subscription. We are pleased to support firms whose preference is in-house — we offer a single-day methodology workshop for in-house teams at $24,000, and Index Pro seats at the published price. Where the firm prefers retained engagement, we retain.

Foundation engagements have a six-month minimum term; Authority and Citation Engine share the term of the underlying Foundation. Cancellation requires sixty days' written notice and triggers final-three-months payable in full. The Citation Engine has a twelve-month minimum given the editorial-relationship investments it requires. The full terms are in the Engagement Legal Pack; mid-firm and BigLaw counsel should be able to review the Pack without renegotiation.

Reasonable. The Practice Group operates under a written information security and confidentiality policy that mirrors the requirements of major BigLaw firms; the policy is in Part IV of the Engagement Legal Pack and is available on request. Our access to firm systems is read-only for authority infrastructure work and is provisioned through the firm's standard vendor onboarding process. Our content drafts are reviewed by firm counsel before publication. The Standards of Professional Conduct (§17 Section E) bind every member of the account team to confidentiality; breaches are disciplinary matters.