Scope & Billing Guardian

Where it works well

It does the line-by-line reconciliation against the costs agreement every time, in full, before the bill leaves the practice.

On a fixed-fee matter the value is buried in the exceptions: a Phase 4 workshop billed under a fee that only covers Phases 1–3, an interview billed at $480/hr against an agreed $420, non-billable travel that slipped onto the bill.
Best for a mid-sized practice or in-house team running enough concurrent matters that no one can hold every scope and rate in their head — on a mix of fixed-fee, estimate-capped and time-billed work.
The fee-earner or costs lawyer who reconciles a stack of pre-bills by eye gets that reconciliation as a draft, and redirects the recaptured hours to the judgement calls — whether to raise a variation, whether to write off, whether to honour a rate.

The slow, invisible problem is the cross-check that should happen on every draft bill and almost never does — tracing each time entry back to the scope the fee covers, the agreed rate for that fee-earner, and the non-billable rules, under deadline, across dozens of matters a month.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong when the scope or rate it checks against is stale — and an adjusted bill looks more authoritative than the costs agreement behind it.

Weak where scope lives in a partner's recollection rather than a written costs agreement — with nothing to compare a line to, it will either flag everything or flag nothing.
Weak on genuinely judgement-heavy billing — value-based pricing set per matter, blended rates negotiated verbally, "we'll sort it out at the end" — where almost every line is an exception to a rule no one wrote down, so the exception list becomes noise.
An out-of-date rate card or an unrecorded variation produces stale flags with the same certainty as real ones, so the held list is never a substitute for the principal reading the bill.

The honest test

Pull your last ten draft bills and try to point, for each questionable line, at the clause in the costs agreement that governs it. If you can't find the clause quickly, neither can the tool — and that's a billing-discipline problem before it's an AI one.

If a variation was agreed and signed last week but not yet recorded, the tool flags legitimately-billable Phase 4 work as out of scope — a clean, confident wrong result that looks exactly like a right one. It reads what the practice management system holds at review time, not what was actually agreed.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It flags the exception and drafts the note. The responsible principal decides and bills. That boundary is not optional.

WHAT IT DOES

Surfaces where a line departs from the costs agreement scope, the agreed rate, or the non-billable rules, with the clause it measured against

Drafts the adjustment note and the adjusted total, and tracks consumed fee against a fixed-fee cap or estimate

States plainly that nothing has been issued to the client, and holds the flagged bill for review

WHAT IT WON’T

Issue the bill, raise a variation, or send anything to the client

Decide whether to honour a rate, absorb out-of-scope work, or write off non-billable time

Certify that the costs are fair and reasonable, or that disclosure obligations are met

What is charged and disclosed to a client is regulated work in Australia. Under the Legal Profession Uniform Law a law practice must give costs disclosure where costs are likely to exceed $750 ex GST and disbursements, legal costs must be fair and reasonable and proportionate, and trust money can only be withdrawn for costs after a bill is given — and overcharging is a matter for the Legal Services Commissioner. A wrong bill lands on the responsible principal, not the tool, so the person accountable for the costs stays on the decision.

What your data has to look like

A written, current costs agreement scope and rate card, and time entries structured enough to match against them.

Typical readiness

across orgs we see, before the first job

A written costs agreement scope per matter

Needs shaping

The agreed rate card per role, by matter

Needs shaping

Non-billable rules stated explicitly

Usual weak point

Time entries with matter, phase and timekeeper

Usual weak point

An owner and a cadence for recording variations

Needs shaping

The real first job

The scope and the variation trail are almost always the weak point — priced in email threads, costs disclosures that don't tie to time entries, and a partner's memory of what was agreed. Getting the scope, rate card and billable rules into a consistent, machine-readable shape — usually by changing how the costs agreement and time entry are captured, not by buying a tool — is the real first job, and it is bigger and more valuable than the AI layer that sits on top.

Right fit if…

Enough concurrent matters that no one holds every scope and rate in their head

A mix of fixed-fee, estimate-capped and time-billed work with a written costs agreement

Time entries carry the matter, phase, role and rate the tool needs to match against

You want the reconciliation as a held draft, not an auto-issued bill

Walk away if…

Scope lives in a partner's recollection rather than a written costs agreement

Billing is value-based or blended-rate, negotiated verbally per matter

Variations are agreed but not recorded in the system before billing

You want a tool that signs off that the costs are fair and reasonable for you

Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

It can do both, which is exactly why it never issues or holds a bill on its own. Every draft is presented to the responsible principal with the exceptions it found, each pinned to the clause it relied on — costs agreement §1.2, rate card §4.1 — so you can see its reasoning and overrule it in one click. A bill it marks clean is still yours to issue or not; a bill it flags is held only in the sense that it asks you to look before it goes out. Overcharging a client is a matter for the Legal Services Commissioner, so the person who is accountable for the costs approves the bill, not the tool.

Probably not well on day one, and that is the honest answer. The tool can only check a line if the scope the fee covers, the agreed rate per role, and the non-billable rules are written down somewhere it can read. If your matters are priced in email threads or partners’ heads, getting that into a consistent, machine-readable form is the real first job — and it is usually more valuable than the AI layer itself. It is the work we help with before anything goes near a bill.

No. It does the line-by-line cross-checking against the costs agreement — the slow, easy-to-skip part — so the person who reviews the bill spends their time on the judgement: whether to raise a variation for out-of-scope work, whether to honour a higher rate as a goodwill gesture, whether to write off the travel. Those calls, and responsibility for whether the costs are fair and reasonable under the Legal Profession Uniform Law, stay with the responsible principal. Reviewing capacity is recaptured for that judgement, not removed.

Current enough that the costs agreement and rate card it checks against are the ones in force for that matter, and that the time entries are the ones actually about to be billed. If a variation was signed last week but not recorded, the tool will confidently flag legitimately-billable Phase 4 work as out of scope. It reads what the practice management system holds at review time, so a stale scope or an out-of-date rate card produces stale flags — the most common cause of a wrong call.

Client matter and billing data frequently attracts client legal privilege, so this matters. The pattern runs against your accounting and practice-management systems through their APIs, and the review and approval happen in your own workflow. Which model sees the data, where it runs, and its retention terms are decisions we scope with you up front, with Australian data-handling and your confidentiality and privilege obligations under the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules as the frame. Nothing is sent to a client without a person approving it.

No. It reviews the professional-fees and disbursement lines on a draft bill against the costs agreement and flags exceptions; it does not move money, issue the bill, or touch the trust account. Under the Legal Profession Uniform Law trust money can only be drawn for costs after a bill has been given, and that step stays a deliberate human action by the responsible principal — the tool gets you to a correct, reviewed bill faster, but the billing and any trust withdrawal remain yours.

What it takes to build

3–5 weeks · 4 phases

Reused from template~65%

Bespoke to this skin~35%

stack · Claude · accounting & practice-system APIs · review UI

What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

Bite-sized first piece

Encode one matter type's scope + rates

Pilot build

Most builds land here

Embedded support

Scale on proof

Considering this for your practice?

The honest place to start is the costs agreement — getting your scope, rate card and non-billable rules written down and owned. Tell us where the bill review hurts; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

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