A governable 90-day AI Pilot for law firms

Choose one operating question with a named owner and a group of representative matters. Describe the current process, intended benefit, users, inputs, output and consequence of error. Classify the data and identify applicable client, legal, professional, privacy and security requirements. Australian Government AI adoption guidance provides voluntary implementation practices rather than a general mandatory law for private firms; use it as a governance aid alongside the obligations that actually apply. Complete provider and integration diligence, decide which fields are necessary and document prohibited data. Design read-only access where possible and define the human review step, escalation path and evidence record. Capture a baseline for the current workflow without over-claiming precision. Finally, write the stop conditions: a permission failure, unmanageable data scope, unreliable source mapping or review burden may justify pausing before live use.

Begin with a small authorised group and make the Pilot boundary visible at the point of use. Observe how people handle source links, uncertainty, false positives and exceptions. Do not measure only output volume or speed. Record whether reviewers can reproduce the reason for a prompt, whether they open authoritative sources, how often they correct or reject an output and whether actions reach the right owner. Test access with allowed and excluded matters. Exercise incident and escalation procedures using controlled scenarios. The Essential Eight maturity model is authoritative Australian cyber guidance, but it is not a universal certification requirement for private law firms and does not replace a service-specific assessment. Use relevant security practices proportionately, document residual risk and keep normal source-system workflows available if the Pilot service is unavailable.

The final phase should challenge the workflow, not polish the demonstration. Review missed cases, repeated dismissals, source-data gaps, stale refreshes, permission anomalies and user workarounds. Retune rules only through a documented change and compare behavior before and after. Revoke access for a test user, disconnect the integration, export the required Pilot record and verify deletion or retention steps. Ask reviewers whether the system improved the defined decision and whether the evidence was proportionate to the task. Where personal information is involved and the organisation is subject to the Privacy Act, reassess whether actual use matched the approved purpose and controls. The owner then prepares a decision record with observed benefits, limitations, incidents, unresolved questions, costs and residual risk. The option to stop must remain real.

At the gate, choose stop, adapt, repeat or expand. Expansion should be narrow: another cohort, another source or another workflow, not an automatic firm-wide launch. Useful evidence includes review completion, traceability, false-positive patterns, exceptions, permission results, source-data corrections and participant feedback. A productivity claim requires a defensible local method; do not turn anecdote or an industry statistic into guaranteed savings. Record which provider versions, settings and contractual terms were assessed because later changes may trigger reapproval. Assign owners for ongoing monitoring, training and incident response. If the Pilot continues, preserve the same discipline: every new use has a purpose, data boundary, reviewer, escalation path and disconnect plan. Ninety days has succeeded when the firm can make a better governed decision, including a well-supported decision not to proceed.