Professional Services /Drafting interactive demo field guide · 9 min

Quote Drafter

Turn an inbound request for quote into a priced first-pass draft in minutes, built from your own prior quotes and house pricing rules.

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theater/demos/profsvc_quote-drafter.html · sandbox · read-only

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FIG. 1

The live demo, running on fabricated data. Open it to step through the full flow — every output is shown for a person to approve before anything happens.

How it would work

Reads the new-matter enquiry and its attachments, drafts a scoped fixed-fee costs proposal with every line and the source it came from, and surfaces it for a principal to check and approve before it reaches the client.

Input 01

The enquiry + its attachments

An inbound new-matter enquiry email and the documents it carries — the brief, prior correspondence, any earlier engagement or costs agreement — plus your firm's fee scales and matter-type templates.

Agent 02

Scopes, prices, drafts

Extracts the matter scope as structured fields with the source for each, matches it to a comparable matter type, and drafts a fixed-fee costs proposal — stage line items, a single-figure estimate, and the basis of costs.

Output 03

A draft, with its working shown

A draft costs proposal with every line, the source it was drawn from, and any borderline-scope flag laid out for a principal or supervising solicitor to review, correct and approve before it is disclosed to the client.

Where it works well

It does the scope-to-price assembly every time, in full, and shows where each line came from.

Done by hand a fixed-fee proposal is an hour or two of reading and re-keying — and it is the task that slides when the principal is in court or with a client.
Best for the principal or supervising solicitor of a small practice who scopes and quotes their own matters: new instructions, referrals, repeat-client work.
At a steady flow of recognisable matters, the recaptured hours go back into the legal work and the client conversation, not the costs paperwork.

The slow, invisible part of a costs proposal is not setting the price — it is reading the enquiry and its attachments, pulling the scope out, and reassembling a stage-by-stage estimate from how the firm priced the last matter like it.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong when the matter is novel or the inputs are stale — and a clean draft hides a weak estimate.

Weak where scope is genuinely uncertain — open-ended litigation, a matter whose direction depends on the other side. A single-figure estimate there is a guess dressed as a quote; it should flag, not commit.
If most of your matters are bespoke one-offs with no comparable prior matter, the draft gives you less than your own judgement already does.

The honest test

If you cannot say, right now, which fee scale and which comparable matter this estimate was built from — this tool makes your wrong number faster, not safer.

Point it at a matter type the firm has never run, or fee scales that were not updated when rates or court fees moved, and it drafts a tidy, professional costs proposal full of numbers that no longer hold. That is the trap.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It drafts the proposal. A principal discloses it. That boundary is deliberate.

WHAT IT DOES

Surfaces each scope field and the document line it was read from

Shows the comparable matter and fee basis it priced against

Flags scope that is borderline or open-ended rather than guessing a figure

WHAT IT WON’T

Send the costs disclosure or costs agreement to the client

Decide whether the firm should take the matter on

Run the conflict check or confirm the estimate is reasonable

A costs disclosure carries obligations under the Legal Profession Uniform Law (in force in NSW, Victoria and WA). Under s174 the firm must give the client the basis of costs and a single-figure estimate of total costs, in writing — and under s178 a costs agreement can be void if those disclosure obligations are not met, exposing the practice at costs assessment. The accountable solicitor stays on the decision because the consequence — to the client and to the practice's standing with the Legal Services Commissioner or VLSB+C — lands on them, not the tool.

What your data has to look like

Matter scope as readable fields, a current fee scale, and comparable prior matters to price from.

Typical readiness

across orgs we see, before the first job

New-matter enquiries that carry the scope

Needs shaping

A current firm fee scale, machine-readable

Usual weak point

A library of comparable prior matters, structured

Needs shaping

Matter-type templates for the costs basis

Usual weak point

A conflict-check signal the draft can wait on

Needs shaping

The real first job

The fee scale and the comparable-matter library are usually the weak point — rates that live in a partner's memory, prior costs estimates buried in closed matter files. Getting how the firm captures matter scope and prices it into a current, structured form is usually the real first job — larger and more valuable than the drafting layer on top. Once the inputs are clean, every proposal after that is faster and right by default.

Right fit if…

You scope and quote your own matters regularly — new instructions, referrals, repeat work

A steady flow of recognisable matter types you have priced before

You can point to the current firm fee scale today

Your enquiries arrive with the brief and scope in readable form

Walk away if…

Most matters are bespoke, open-ended one-offs with no comparable prior matter

Your fee scale lives in a partner's head or last year's spreadsheet

Scope only exists as a phone note nobody writes up

You need a tool that runs the conflict check or signs off the estimate for you

Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

It can draft a wrong figure — which is exactly why nothing is disclosed on its say-so. It builds the estimate from your fee scale and a comparable prior matter, shows its working line by line, and flags scope that is borderline rather than guessing. A principal checks that before it becomes a costs disclosure. Under the Legal Profession Uniform Law the costs you disclose under s174 must be a genuine estimate, and at costs assessment an unreasonable or undisclosed figure can be challenged — so the human review is the safeguard, not a formality.

Partly, and the mess is usually the first real job. The tool reads the enquiry and its attachments to pull out the matter scope; if half the scope lives in a phone note nobody wrote up, the draft is only as good as what it could read, and it can’t price what it can’t see. It works best where new-matter enquiries arrive with the brief in a readable form. Getting matter intake and your fee scale into clean, current shape is the piece that pays off across every proposal after.

No. It removes the reading and re-keying — the hour of pulling scope out of an enquiry and reassembling a stage-by-stage estimate — so the principal spends their time on the judgement: whether to take the matter, whether the scope is right, what the risks are, whether the fee is fair to this client. The costs disclosure is still theirs to make. The capacity it frees goes back into the legal work.

Current to this year’s rates and court fees. The tool applies the fee scale it is given; if your hourly rates, fixed-fee bands or disbursement assumptions moved and the scale didn’t, it will confidently draft last year’s numbers. Pin a clear review date on the fee scale, and treat any line drawn from an old matter as a figure to re-check, not trust.

A client’s identity, brief and the fact they are seeking advice are sensitive and may attract client legal privilege, so the deployment is scoped to your own systems and data handling, not a shared pool — we scope where the data sits and who can see it as part of the build. The human-approval step keeps a solicitor between any draft and the client. The demo here runs on fabricated data; the enquiry and the figures in it are not a real matter.

No — and it shouldn’t. It drafts the costs proposal and flags borderline scope, but it does not run the conflict check required before acting, nor certify that the disclosure meets the Legal Profession Uniform Law. A conflict check against the firm’s records, and confirmation that the basis-of-costs and estimate satisfy s174, are the accountable solicitor’s to make. The tool gets the draft most of the way; the person closes the last, load-bearing step.

What it takes to build

3–4 weeks · 4 phases

Reused from template~70%

Bespoke to this skin~30%

stack · Claude · template engine · review UI

What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

Bite-sized first piece

One contained change, low risk

Pilot build

Most builds land here

Embedded support

Scale on proof

Considering this for your practice?

The honest place to start is a bite-sized first piece — one contained change, low risk. Tell us where the quoting hurts; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

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