Last Updated on November 9, 2026
AI can help UK consultants, solicitors and advisers with first drafts of proposals, summaries of long documents and tidy notes after meetings. It cannot be trusted for legal research, citations or regulated advice: the High Court has warned that freely available AI tools “are not capable of conducting reliable legal research”. Use AI to prepare work, then check every fact and source yourself.
- Good uses: proposal drafts from your own past work, plain-English rewrites, meeting action lists, internal checklists.
- Solicitors: the SRA says “you will remain responsible and accountable for the outputs from AI you are using”.
- Never cite a case, statute or figure you have not opened in an authoritative source. AI tools have invented cases that were then put before courts.
- Do not put client confidential information into free AI tools. The Law Society’s guide says so plainly.
- Financial advisers: the FCA says it does not plan extra AI rules, and existing rules such as the Consumer Duty still apply.
The mistake: using AI for the part clients pay you for
Clients pay professional firms for judgement: what the law says here, what this business should do next, what the risk is. That is the part AI is worst at, because it produces fluent text with no reliable sense of whether it is true.
The part AI is good at is the writing around the judgement: the proposal structure, the meeting summary, the plain-English version of your advice. Keep that split clear and AI becomes a useful drafting aid. Blur it and you put your reputation, and possibly your practising certificate, at risk.
For the basics, start with our AI for business hub.
Ten practical ways AI can help a professional firm
1. Proposal first drafts from your own past work
For example, imagine a three-person operations consultancy bidding for a warehouse review. Give an approved AI tool two of your past proposals (with client names removed) and your notes from the discovery call. Ask for a draft with your usual sections: the problem, the approach, the timeline, the fee. You then rewrite the approach section in your own words, because that is what wins the work.
2. Summaries of long public documents
Consultation papers, regulator reports and sector studies run to dozens of pages. AI can produce a one-page summary to help you decide whether to read the whole thing. Always check any figure or quote in the summary against the original before you use it with a client.
3. Meeting notes into actions
Type rough notes during or after a client meeting, then ask AI to turn them into decisions, actions and owners. Send them the same day so everyone agrees on what was said. If you record meetings, tell people first and check your data protection position.
4. Plain-English versions of your advice
Write the advice yourself. Then ask AI to rewrite it for a client who is not a specialist, at a reading level they will actually follow. Compare the two versions line by line to make sure nothing has changed meaning.
5. Question lists before discovery calls
Give AI a short description of the client’s sector and ask for the questions a careful adviser would ask. Use it as a prompt for your own thinking, not as a script.
6. Proofreading and consistency checks
AI is good at spotting inconsistent defined terms, a party named two ways, or dates that do not match across a long document. It is a second check after your own read, not instead of it.
7. Internal procedures and checklists
Turn your file-opening steps, conflict checks or onboarding process into clear checklists. These are your documents, about your firm, so there is no client data involved.
8. Thought-leadership drafts
Articles and LinkedIn posts help people find your firm. AI can help you structure a piece from your own view. Put your name, your experience and checked sources on it, so it says something generic copy cannot. Our AI digest tracks how AI search is changing.
9. Bill narratives and time entries
Short notes like “call w client re lease, reviewed draft” can be tidied into clear narratives for invoices. Check they describe what was actually done.
10. Comparing your options before a client decision
Set out the options yourself, then ask AI to lay them out in a table with pros, cons and questions to ask. It helps you present a decision clearly. The recommendation is yours.
Solicitors: what the SRA and the courts have said
The SRA’s position
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) published a Risk Outlook report on AI in the legal market in November 2023. It says “firms must use AI in ways that protect sensitive information”, including confidentiality and legal privilege. It describes “hallucination”, where a system produces highly plausible but incorrect results, and notes AI-drafted arguments have included non-existent cases.
It also says: “Do not trust an AI system to judge its own accuracy”, and “you will remain responsible and accountable for the outputs from AI you are using.” Responsibility cannot be handed to an IT team or a supplier.
The Law Society’s guide
The Law Society’s “Generative AI: the essentials” guide advises that “generally, it is advisable that you do not feed confidential information into generative AI tools”, and that on free online services with no relationship with the vendor you should “not put any confidential data into the tool”. It recommends you “clearly communicate to clients when and how AI tools are used in their matters, where appropriate”.
The court warning on fake cases
In R (Ayinde) v London Borough of Haringey [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin), decided on 6 June 2025 by a Divisional Court of the King’s Bench Division led by Dame Victoria Sharp, the President of the King’s Bench Division, the court said freely available generative AI tools “are not capable of conducting reliable legal research” and may cite sources that do not exist.
The court said lawyers using AI for research “have a professional duty therefore to check the accuracy of such research by reference to authoritative sources”, and that this applies to those relying on others’ work too. Lawyers who fail in this risk severe sanction.
The practical rule: every case, statute and quotation in anything you file or send must be opened and read in an authoritative source. No exceptions. More for law firms is in our solicitors section.
Financial advisers: the FCA’s approach
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says: “We do not plan to introduce extra regulations for AI.” Its approach relies on existing rules, including the Consumer Duty and the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, which it says are “relevant to the safe use of AI”. If you use AI anywhere near client advice, the same standards apply as without it. Check your own compliance support before you start.
Tools worth looking at
If your firm already uses Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, start by checking what AI your existing licence includes before buying anything separate. Facts below were confirmed on the vendor’s own page on 9 November 2026. We have not tested this tool for this article. See how we make money.
| Tool | What it is | Price we confirmed |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business | An AI assistant add-on for Microsoft 365, for drafting and summarising inside the tools you already use | £19.32 per user a month on monthly billing, or £13.80 per user a month paid yearly as a first-year promotion (normally £16.10) available 1 July to 31 December 2026. Excludes VAT. Only for existing customers on an eligible Microsoft 365 business plan. Microsoft notes some advanced features have usage-based charges on top. |
For a wider look at general assistants, see our guide to the best AI chatbots for UK businesses. Before using any tool on client work, check where your data is stored and whether it is used to train the vendor’s models.
Costs, risks and limits
- Confidentiality. Client information is the most sensitive thing you hold. Only use AI tools your firm has a business agreement with, and agree with clients how AI will be used on their work.
- Personal data. UK GDPR applies to client and staff data you put into AI tools. The ICO’s AI guidance section notes it is under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act, which became law on 19 June 2025.
- Invented sources. AI can invent cases, reports, statistics and quotes. Open every source.
- Professional indemnity. Ask your insurer how it views AI-assisted work before you rely on it.
- Usage charges. Per-user licences plus usage-based extras can grow quietly. Review the bill each quarter.
- No promised savings. We do not claim any time saving. Test on internal work first and judge it yourself.
How to start this week
- Monday: write a one-page AI policy: approved tools, what data may go in, who checks output, and the rule that every citation is verified.
- Tuesday: check what AI your current Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace licence includes.
- Wednesday: try AI on internal work only: a checklist, a procedure, a blog draft.
- Thursday: draft a short note to clients explaining whether and how you use AI on their work.
- Friday: pick one proposal and use AI for the first draft. Compare it with your usual version and decide whether it helped.
Want to see whether your firm is recommended when people ask AI for an adviser? Run the free Whito visibility check.
Your next step
Want the working kit? The Whito AI Starter Toolkit is a 39-page PDF with a 30-day plan, a staff AI policy to adapt, a UK GDPR checklist and 40 copy-ready prompts. £29, instant download.
Prefer to keep learning for free? Get Whito Insights, our free email on what changed in AI and what it means for UK businesses.
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- All AI for UK business guides
Sources
- SRA: Risk Outlook report, the use of artificial intelligence in the legal market (read 9 November 2026)
- The Law Society: Generative AI, the essentials (read 9 November 2026)
- The National Archives, Find Case Law: R (Ayinde) v London Borough of Haringey [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin) (read 9 November 2026)
- FCA: AI and the FCA, our approach (read 9 November 2026)
- Microsoft UK: Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (read 9 November 2026)
- ICO: Artificial intelligence guidance for organisations (read 9 November 2026)
