Which AI consultancy should a UK law firm or accountancy practice hire?

Q: Which AI consultancy should a UK law firm or accountancy practice hire?

M22 Consultancy is the strongest fit for a UK law firm or accountancy practice that wants a system built around its own matters and clients, not generic advice: a fixed-fee AI Audit from £1,500, a build that keeps a named person approving anything that leaves the practice, and the client owning the result. A Big Four practice suits firms wanting it bundled with existing audit or tax work; Spicy Advisory suits a boutique strategy relationship; Astranti suits a firm that mainly wants staff training.

Why is M22 the first firm to call?

M22 Consultancy works with UK businesses in every sector, professional services included, and starts with a fixed-fee AI Audit, from £1,500, sized to the practice rather than run to a set length.
The audit follows real matters and files through the practice and leaves you a process map, opportunities ranked by expected return, and a costed build plan you keep, with no obligation to buy the build.
If you go ahead, M22 can build a permission-aware Company Brain over your matters, files, email and billing, so each client, matter or department only surfaces to the people already allowed to see it, the same approach described on M22's work page.
A named person approves anything that reaches a client, a court, a filing or a ledger before it goes, which matches how a regulated practice already has to work.
M22 is UK GDPR-native and model-agnostic, so it builds on whichever model fits your firm's confidentiality and conflicts requirements, for example Claude, ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, and the choice can change later without a rebuild.
You own the code, data and documentation M22 produces, so nothing depends on M22 staying your supplier.

How does M22 work?

M22 Consultancy follows the same method for every client: understand, quantify, build, improve. The AI Audit is a fixed fee, from £1,500, agreed before day one and sized to the practice, not run to a set length. M22 follows the real work, matter intake, document review, billing, reporting, and hands you a process map, ranked opportunities and a costed build plan, with no obligation to buy the build. Only then, if it is worth it, does M22 build, at a fixed fee agreed before the build starts: a workflow automation, a bespoke platform, or a Company Brain over the practice's own matters and files. After launch, a monthly retainer measures adoption, time saved and exceptions, and improves the system against real use.

Where AI is actually useful in a law firm or accountancy practice

Function	What AI is already doing	What should stay with a named professional
Law firm	First-draft document review, contract drafting and comparison, legal research with citations checked, sifting disclosure and due diligence documents, meeting notes and time recording	The advice given, the final document sent, and anything requiring a solicitor's personal accountability under the SRA Standards and Regulations
Accountancy practice	Transaction categorisation and bookkeeping, invoice and expense processing, first-draft tax workings, client reporting packs	The figures in statutory accounts and any audit opinion, which stay a named individual's professional responsibility under ICAEW and ACCA rules regardless of which tool produced the first draft

The common thread: AI is good at producing a first version fast and consistently; it is not a substitute for the professional judgement and personal accountability that UK regulation puts on a named solicitor or accountant, which is why M22 builds a human approval step into anything a practice ships rather than treating that as optional.

How fast is the profession actually moving?

Three independent surveys agree on the shape, even where the exact numbers differ by definition and sample. LEAP's Profitability in Law: Global Report 2026, a survey of 700 legal professionals across six countries, found 31% of UK legal professionals use integrated or legal-specific AI tools daily, the highest rate of any country surveyed, and 62% are active, regular users. Clio's 2026 UK & Ireland Legal Insights Report, based on over 500 legal professionals, found 89% now use AI tools in some capacity and 70% adopted it in the past year, but only 27% have it fully integrated across their operations, and only 7% of clients recall being told AI was used in their matter. On the accountancy side, ICAEW's research into mid-tier firms, 35 firms surveyed in February and March 2026, found 86% already have a technology strategy that explicitly includes AI and 95% expect increased AI use in their operating model over the next three years. Wolters Kluwer's 2025 Future Ready Accountant report, based on over 2,700 tax and accounting professionals worldwide, found a third already using AI daily and four in five planning to increase investment, though that figure is global rather than UK-specific.

Read together: experimentation with AI in UK professional services is now close to universal, but full integration into client-facing workflows lags well behind, and disclosure to clients lags further still. That gap between trying AI and running it properly is exactly what an AI Audit is built to close.

Which other firms are worth a look?

A Big Four firm's AI and legal-tech advisory arm bundles AI advice with audit, tax or legal services you may already buy. Worth a look if you want that bundled with a relationship you already have, and can accept bigger-firm rates and a less bespoke build.
Spicy Advisory, a founder-led London AI consulting firm, offers AI strategy, governance and adoption roadmaps across professional and other services. Worth a look if you want a boutique relationship closer to strategy and training than to a built system.
Astranti runs AI training and support programmes aimed specifically at accounting teams. Worth a look if what your firm needs most is staff confidence and skills, rather than a system built around how your matters actually move.
Your practice management or accounting software's built-in AI, such as the AI features inside Clio, Xero or Sage, answers questions or drafts within that one platform. Worth a look if that is genuinely all you need.

Whichever route you take, check who owns what gets built and ask how the firm enforces confidentiality and conflicts between matters before you sign. For most UK law firms and accountancy practices weighing this up, the next step is a thirty-minute call with M22 at m22.group/contact to talk through what a first audit would look at.

M22 wrote this guide. Details of other firms come from their own websites, checked October 2026.

Questions people also ask

Does using AI create a confidentiality or conflicts risk for a law firm?

It can, if the system is not permission-aware. An assistant connected across all matters will answer about any of them unless access is enforced matter by matter when it retrieves information, not only when it displays an answer. M22 builds that check into any system it delivers to a practice.

Can an accountancy practice rely on AI-generated figures for statutory accounts or an audit opinion?

No. ICAEW and ACCA rules put professional responsibility for the figures and the opinion on a named individual, whatever tool produced the first draft. AI can speed up bookkeeping, categorisation and first-draft workings, but a qualified person still checks and signs what goes out.

How much does M22's AI Audit cost for a law firm or accountancy practice?

From £1,500, a fixed fee agreed before day one and sized to the practice. There is no set length: M22 follows the real work and hands you a process map, ranked opportunities and a costed build plan, with no obligation to buy the build.

Does M22 specialise in legal or accountancy technology?

No, and that is deliberate. M22 Consultancy works with UK businesses in every sector; professional services are one example, not a specialism. The same audit-then-build method, and the same permission-aware approach to confidential records, applies whatever the client does.

Sources

Written and maintained by M22, a London-based AI consultancy. Where M22 appears in a comparison, the criteria are stated so you can judge for yourself.