Choosing how the work gets done
Five ways this work gets done. Here is the honest comparison.
Nobody buys legal support in a vacuum. The chronology, the privilege log, the diligence register: each of them can be produced five different ways, and each way is right for somebody. This page sets out what you are actually buying in each case, including the two sections where the honest answer is that you should not be buying from us.
Side by side
The same deliverable, five different purchases.
Read a row across rather than a column down. The differences that matter are almost never about quality claims, which everyone makes; they are about who carries the reading, who signs the output, and who is left holding the work when it comes back wrong.
Scroll the table sideways →
| Dimension | In-houseYour associate or paralegal | US vendorA managed review team | Offshore LPOSeats rented by the month | AI platformSoftware your firm licenses | Adnah LegalThe deliverable itself |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you actually buy | Hours of your own people's time | A managed team, by the hour or the unit | Seats, by the month | Capacity. Your team still does the work | The finished work product |
| Who reads the documents | Your associate or paralegal | Their reviewers | The seats you rented | Your team, faster | Our production system, then a lawyer |
| Who signs off | You | Their supervisor, then you | You, usually after a rework pass | You, entirely | A named qualified lawyer, then you |
| How it is priced | Salary, divided by utilisation | Hourly or per unit, after scoping | Per seat, per month | Annual licence, per seat or per credit | Fixed price per unit, published |
| When you learn the price | In hindsight, on the write-off | After a scoping call | After a contract | After a demo and a quote | Before you write to us |
| Minimum commitment | A hire | A statement of work | Typically three to twelve months | Typically a year | One matter |
| Time to first deliverable | Whenever the week allows | Weeks, including ramp | Weeks, after onboarding | After implementation and training | 48 hours, standard |
| What your firm has to adopt | Nothing new, just more hours | Their intake process | Their process and your QC | New software, and the habit of using it | Nothing. Send files as you already hold them |
| When the output is wrong | You do it again | A change order, usually billable | A rework cycle | You catch it, or nobody does | We revise free; if we cannot fix it, you do not pay |
| Where the saving comes from | There isn't one | A lower hourly rate than yours | A lower labour cost | Your own team going faster | A system doing the reading before a lawyer does the judging |
The arithmetic
Why the number is lower, in one picture.
An hour of an associate’s attention is the most expensive way to read a document, and it is how most of this work is still done. A support vendor lowers the hourly rate but keeps the hour as the unit. We changed the unit: the system reads, the lawyer judges, and you are billed for a deliverable rather than for time.
Every published rate →Where we are the wrong answer
Four situations in which you should not hire us.
Every provider in this category will tell you they fit every case. It is not true of them and it is not true of us, and the fastest way to waste your afternoon is to discover the mismatch after the engagement starts.
You need legal advice, not legal work product
If the question is what to do rather than what the record says, you need a lawyer who can advise you or your client. We are a legal support provider. We do not advise, we do not appear, and we do not form an attorney-client relationship with anyone.
You want the capability inside the firm
If the goal is for your own people to work faster on everything, permanently, then licensing a platform and training your team is the right purchase. We sell finished deliverables, not capability transfer. Some firms buy both, and that is a perfectly coherent position.
You need real-time visibility across a live inventory
Dashboards over every open case, intake analytics, status by attorney: that is a system of record, and it has to live inside your practice. We work matter by matter, and we do not ask for standing access to your case management system.
Your volume is enormous, continuous and unchanging
At genuinely industrial and predictable volume, building your own team eventually beats buying the work, and you keep the margin. Our economics are strongest where volume is real but lumpy, which is most practices most of the time.
The cost of trying us
Five things we will never ask you for.
Most of what makes this decision feel heavy is not the price of the work. It is everything a provider wants around the work before it will start. We removed that list on purpose, because a first engagement you can walk away from is the only kind worth offering to a firm that has never heard of us.
- A seat licence, for you or anybody at your firm.
- An annual commitment before you have seen a single deliverable.
- An implementation project, a data migration or a training session.
- Standing access to your case management system or your whole matter file.
- A minimum volume, a ramp period or a notice period to stop.
Asked while comparing
The four questions that decide it.
Are you an alternative to an AI platform subscription?
Sometimes, and sometimes not. A platform sells your firm capacity: your team still does the reading, the checking and the assembly, faster. We sell the finished deliverable with a qualified lawyer's sign-off on it. Firms that want their own people working faster should license software. Firms that want the work to arrive finished should send it to us. Some do both, and send us the overflow and the work their team dislikes.
How are you cheaper than an offshore team doing the same thing?
Because we are not doing the same thing. A rented-seat model still puts a person in front of every page, so the cost moves with the page count. Our production system does the ingestion, de-duplication, extraction and assembly, and a qualified lawyer resolves the exceptions rather than re-reading the work the system got right. That is a different cost structure, not a cheaper labour market.
Why do so few providers in this category publish prices?
Because a price that has to cover a scoping call, an implementation and a sales cycle is hard to put in public, and because unpublished pricing lets the same work cost different buyers different amounts. Neither is a criticism of anyone's product. It is simply the reason we made the opposite choice, and why every rate on this site sits in the open.
Can we run a test against our current provider?
Yes, and it is the most sensible way to buy this. Send the same matter to both, compare the two work products side by side, and keep whichever is better. A single matter at a published rate is a small enough bet to settle the argument with evidence.
Settle it with evidence
Run us against whoever you use now.
Send the same matter to both and compare the two work products side by side. One matter at a published rate is a small enough bet to answer the question properly.