AI for professional services firms. More work without more hiring.

At a glance

• Who it's for: managing partners, principals, owners and COOs of professional services firms with $10M+ in annual revenue, usually with no CTO.
• What Modern Thesis does: AI strategy, change management, implementation and ongoing stewardship, from one team.
• How it starts: a strategic assessment that measures how the work moves today and ranks where AI pays first. See the assessment.
• Where: based in the Denver area, with an office at 11001 W 120th Ave, Ste 400, Broomfield, CO 80021. On site across the Denver metro and Colorado, and remote anywhere in the US.
• What it doesn't do: give legal, tax or engineering advice, stamp or sign professional work, or publish a rate card. Each engagement is priced to its scope after a first conversation.

Who is this page for?

This page is for the leaders of firms that sell expertise by the hour, the project or the matter, and that are being asked what the firm is doing about AI. Usually some staff already use ChatGPT on their own, leadership wants it organized and private, and the backlog keeps growing while hiring stays slow. If that describes your firm, the useful question is where AI adds capacity to the work you already bill.

Where does AI help professional services firms?

AI helps most in the work around expert judgment: the reading, sorting, searching and first drafts that take a large share of every professional's week. Six areas are common across firms:

• Intake and triage: answer inquiries, collect the facts, check conflicts or fit, and route the matter to the right person.
• Document assembly and review: first drafts from the firm's own templates and past work, and a first-pass review of what comes in.
• Proposal writing: draft responses from past proposals, resumes and project sheets.
• Report generation: turn field notes, data and analysis into the firm's report format for review.
• Knowledge search: ask questions of the firm's past work in plain language and get answers with sources.
• Billing and time capture: reconstruct time from email and documents, and review bills before they go out.

Which kinds of firms does this cover?

The work differs by profession, so each has its own page: personal injury law, family law, estate planning law, CPA and accounting firms, civil engineering, architecture and planning, environmental consulting and Colorado water rights firms. These pages explain how AI applies to each. They are not a claim that we specialize in any of them.

What does Modern Thesis do for a professional services firm?

Modern Thesis covers four disciplines with one team. In strategy, Jim Coleman and the team map how matters or projects move from inquiry to invoice. In people, we work with partners and staff on incentives and training, because a system the professionals don't trust returns nothing. In implementation, our AI specialists and Forward Deployed Engineers build private systems on the firm's own documents and connect them to the practice software you run. In stewardship, we stay to check accuracy, keep pace with new AI models and report the return against the baseline.

How does an engagement start?

Every engagement starts with a strategic assessment. We sit with the people who do the work, map how it moves through the firm today, and measure a baseline on the workflows that matter most: hours per matter or project, turnaround time, write-downs, proposal hours and time spent searching for past work. Then we rank the opportunities by return and define the first build. If AI won't pay for itself somewhere in your business, we'll tell you.

When is something else the better choice?

Sometimes the answer is a product, not a partner. Many practice management and document platforms now include AI features, and if one fits how your firm works, use it. If the goal is better writing, the Copilot or ChatGPT licenses you already pay for may be enough. An outside team earns its cost when the work crosses several systems, has to be accurate enough to rely on and has to keep working as the tools change. Our page on hiring an AI engineer or an outside team covers that choice.

How Modern Thesis handles this

We put AI to work inside xFusion, the 70-person company Jim co-founded, and then for several of its clients. We bring the same operator approach to professional firms: start with the assessment, build what pays first and stay to keep it measured. Ongoing stewardship has no set end date, and you own your data, accounts, code and documentation throughout.